Abby Martin is here to talk about Cecil the lion and the fake outrage that went on in the wake of his death. She also talks about the Chris Kyle t-shirt controversy and how we should all be mad at the people who doxed the dentist who didxed him. And she talks about why we should be mad about it. This episode was produced and edited by Annie-Rose Strasser and Alex Blumberg. Our theme song is Come Alone by Suneaters, courtesy of Lotuspool Records. Our ad music is by Build Buildings. The music for this episode was written and performed by Mark Phillips. It was mixed by Matthew Boll. Special thanks to our sponsor, VaynerMedia. Thanks also to our patron, Abbie Martin. Thank you Abbie for being on the podcast and for being kind enough to let us use her music. If you liked the show, please leave us a five star rating and a review on Apple Podcasts! We'll be looking out for you in the next round of polls! 5 stars is much appreciated and really helps spread the word out there about the podcast. Peace, Love, Blessings, Cheers! Cheers, EJ & Crispy. - The Cheers. Sarah, Sarah and Crispy Sarah and Sarah xoxo - Emily xo - Caitlyn and Sarah & Sarah xo- - EJ and Sarah and her music is out there is a tribute to Cecil the Lion. - Sarah and she's here to help raise awareness about this amazing lion. in honor of Cecil the and she also has a new book out there in this episode about the lion who was killed by a man named Cecil the elephant in Africa. Thank you so much, thank you for being a hero - Sarah is here for all the work she did so much more than she can do so much - Thank you, Sarah & she s here to be a good friend of the lion, so much so much love you're here to support us with all the love and support us in this beautiful lion - Cheers - Kristy and all of her support, Sarah is out here with her support and support me - so much support and all that says so much of that she's out there - thank you, she's so much out there and so much gratitude and support all of this love and appreciation
00:00:00.000We are doing this show in the honor of Derek the safari guide who was killed by Cecil's cousin in Africa today.
00:00:09.000All day my fucking Facebook has been a mess because of people angry at me, thinking that I really cared that this fucking safari guy got killed.
00:00:19.000But Abby Martin's here to straighten everything out.
00:00:37.000You know, love animals and love humans and have solidarity with all living things.
00:00:42.000But it just seemed really manufactured, especially when I read interviews with people who lived there and they were like, who the fuck is Cecil the lion?
00:00:47.000Like the way the hysteria in this country made it seem like he was like their national animal.
00:00:54.000Like this was the lion that was like a beloved, the lion, right?
00:01:48.000I mean, someone else wrote a really poignant editorial, this African woman, and she was just like, there's so much death and destruction, basically, because of just so many things.
00:01:58.000Globalization, especially with the raping of the Congo, the Civil War there.
00:02:01.000And she was like, but lions matter more than black lives.
00:02:06.000I think when people can, you know, anthropomorphize this, like, creature and feel some sort of connection to it, you can do that about anything.
00:02:13.000We do it with our dogs, but the truth is we're eating animals every day.
00:02:19.000You know, it just seemed like picking and choosing just because it's this, like, majestic creature.
00:02:23.000Yeah, it was also, it gives people an opportunity to be really angry and not think about their real problems.
00:02:28.000Like, there was all these people in front of Cecil's or this guy, the dentist's office, and they were saying, they should have his head on their wall.
00:02:38.000People, I would like to see his head on a wall.
00:02:41.000Like, you really want, you want a person to be killed now, too?
00:02:45.000It actually hit me a little bit too close to home because I saw this wave of hysteria and vitriol against this guy and actual lambasting him with death threats over and over again.
00:02:57.000People going and smearing blood on his office and stuff.
00:03:15.000We're all human beings and you can't do that even if you hate someone or Think that they you know if you personally want someone to die like you can't just be like You should die because you hunted a line you should die because you wore a fuck Chris Kyle shirt I just think that apply it across the board and this kind of online bullying and like Driving people into a hole or doxing them and exposing their personal information because you disagree with something that they did It's wrong Mia Farrow dox the dentist Mia Farrow.
00:03:43.000Yeah, she put the dentist's address online Wow.
00:04:50.000And I just want to make it very clear that I have a lot of respect for veterans and soldiers who choose to defect.
00:04:59.000There's a lot of heroic people like Ben Griffin, Special Operations, and In the UK who basically went to Iraq and just refused to go back.
00:05:08.000So there's a ton of amazing veterans and soldiers who I think that should be praised, especially when we're looking at something like the Iraq War, which was a complete disaster.
00:05:21.000So when we have these heroes that are mythologized in our society, and when we have someone like Chris Kyle, who's the pinnacle of what the hero should be from that war and rewriting the history of the Iraq War, I think it's really dangerous.
00:05:33.000I talked about what I really felt about Chris Kyle.
00:06:10.000Like, it almost started where I was like, oh shit, this is going to be a really good art project because I was getting peddled with like the craziest shit you've ever heard.
00:06:19.000Like, genital mutilation so detailed that I was like, is this ISIS actually writing these comments?
00:06:23.000Because it seems like these people actually admire ISIS because it's like the most grotesque, disturbing things about my vagina and what they wanted ISIS to do to it that I was like, holy fuck, like, you guys must have, like, some sick admiration for ISIS. Now, when you saw that, do you report those people?
00:06:41.000I remember I was going to Baltimore and I just was getting it so frequently that I was like, holy fuck.
00:06:45.000So my Instagram account, I had to make it private immediately because people had gone through and said, we're going to put our raping shoes on and find you, all this shit.
00:06:55.000And then I went on Facebook and saw that every single art post that I had on my art page, every single public.
00:07:00.000So I didn't want to shut it down because I was like, I don't want to Defer to these threats but at the same time it was getting so extreme that I couldn't handle like the volume of of death and rape threats because at first I was like cataloging them and I was like okay I'm taking screenshots of all these I'm gonna make this giant like like art project and I was like no fuck this this is like not this is actually getting way way too crazy and then I got doxxed by this guy This veteran who basically just wrote me and he was
00:07:31.000like, hey, I just posted your address and all the veteran and sniper forms.
00:07:35.000And he was like telling people, you know, how to find you.
00:07:38.000And then I found out that my mom got doxxed.
00:07:41.000So my mom's personal information got exposed.
00:07:45.000And so luckily I was already moving in a week, but I was just like, this is this is bad shit crazy.
00:07:49.000So I tried to contact the cops for like the I think there was like 10 really graphic like I'm going to come to your house this Saturday.
00:07:56.000Cut your clit off like let you bleed to death on the floor like just I mean things like that I was like and it was a person's public Facebook page you can see is like license plate in the photo he had like a baby You know they're just like these people out there who are just totally proud to be like completely homicidal and and rapey and really Sociopathic acting so I went to the cops and I was just like look there's like five people who I know who they are They've said that they're going to come kill me or rape me or cut my clit off and I was like is there anything that you can you can do and And they basically
00:08:26.000just took the report and nothing ever happened.
00:08:30.000Were you supposed to go to the FBI for that?
00:09:05.000Second of all, we're not talking about a marginalized portion of society, which is Arabs who are basically this generation's demonized I was like, we're talking about Chris Kyle, which is like the peak of the Empire, this, you know, homicidal soldier who's like glorified in war propaganda and shit.
00:09:27.000But I just think it's really important to understand the real history of the Iraq War.
00:09:32.000And I think American Sniper really not only whitewashed it, but just doubled down on the myth.
00:09:38.000And, you know, the establishment chooses these war heroes to perpetuate and Chris Kyle is not a hero.
00:09:44.000I think that there are countless heroes that we would be much more appropriate to hail.
00:09:51.000What's hard to, when you look at a story like the American Sniper story, it's hard to figure out what really happened.
00:09:57.000Because there were definitely some fabrications.
00:10:00.000So it's hard to figure out, okay, military people, when they retire, they do not get much money.
00:10:06.000It's piss poor and it's quite an embarrassment.
00:10:09.000It's an embarrassment as far as the way they're treated medically.
00:10:14.000The UFC has worked really hard to provide money for the Intrepid Institute for traumatic brain injuries, which is a huge issue with soldiers because the medical community has made so many incredible advances that people lived that didn't live,
00:10:44.000The amount of billions and billions of dollars that are spent on this war, how the fuck could they not allocate a similar amount to take care of the soldiers?
00:10:55.000It's because the soldiers don't have a voice.
00:11:14.000He said he was shooting people in Katrina that were looting.
00:11:18.000There was all these stories that didn't hold water.
00:11:21.000And I was trying to think, do you think maybe this guy was trying to fabricate a bunch of crazy shit and put it in his book because it would make the book more sensational and sell and this would be a way that this guy could provide for his family.
00:11:34.000Oh, you mean like bringing it back to the human level?
00:11:37.000But I mean, I keep going back to the people who just...
00:11:40.000It's like, yeah, I feel for soldiers who come back with traumatic brain injuries.
00:11:44.000But I do honestly think, especially, you know, dating a veteran who was in the initial invasion of Iraq and stuff, there are people who join the military because they want to kill people.
00:11:54.000A lot of people join the military because they have no options.
00:11:57.000A lot of people join the military because they believed in the Iraq War.
00:12:01.000And the war on terror, and a lot of people just want to slaughter people, and I think Chris Kyle was one of those people, unfortunately.
00:12:09.000Do you think you become one of those people once you get out there?
00:13:25.000Yeah, and aside from just the movie being mad, I think it's just unfortunate to kind of personalize this character so much when, you know, ignoring...
00:13:33.000Basically, people came out of the movie saying Iraqis are savages, and it was all, like, justified.
00:13:37.000Because they're looking through the eyes of someone like Chris Kyle, when really, I mean, look at Iraq today.
00:13:51.000And of course, we can humanize every soldier that's coming back because they were sold false pretenses to go to war.
00:13:56.000But I just have to feel more for the for the people who are just the occupants of the country and they just were casualties of this mess.
00:14:04.000Well, I think we should feel for all humans equally, especially people that we don't know and the idea that they're not as valuable because they live over there.
00:14:13.000If there was something that happened over here where there was a foreign invasion that caused a million casualties from innocent civilians, we would be up in arms and horrified.
00:14:22.000And I don't know what the real numbers are for the Iraq invasion because it's hard to figure it out.
00:14:29.000There's a bunch of different argued numbers.
00:14:32.000Let's say it's the lowball number, which is more than 100,000 innocent civilians.
00:14:51.000Well, here's the problem, and this is all I'm going to say about Sam, because I know that you offered the debate, and I really appreciate that, and I really, really appreciate you offering that, because I know that we've been going back and forth on Twitter and shit.
00:15:02.000What have you gone back and forth with him?
00:15:06.000Or he, you know, just the fire hose of bullshit saying that all I was saying was like hyperbolic, sensational figures and stuff.
00:15:13.000And the problem that I have with Sam Harris and debating him is that I don't feel like I should or need to debate a neuroscience about foreign policy.
00:15:22.000I'm interested in what he has to say about neuroscience and interesting things about what he's studied, but as far as someone arguing with me about US foreign policy and empire, who's a neuroscientist, I don't see any reason that I would get out of that, especially someone who talks about mass casualties with zero empathy.
00:15:40.000Well, I don't necessarily think he's talking about it with zero empathy.
00:15:58.000Journalists, I think, are much more credible than just like scientists who are just jumping in the mix, new atheism movement, and just being like, let's have a giant debate all about Islam.
00:16:09.000But I mean, the information is kind of available to anybody in this day and age, right?
00:16:15.000What he is, maybe he has a degree in neuroscience and he is a neuroscientist, but really he's an author.
00:16:22.000He researches things and he talks about things and agree with him or disagree with him in the way he presents the numbers and the way he's presenting this argument.
00:16:40.000He nitpicked all my numbers saying that they were huge, but all he did was basically cite official casualty count numbers from the Pentagon.
00:16:50.000It's like, do you think that's the fucking accurate number?
00:17:06.000Yeah, I just think it's funny that that's what he hammered in on, is me basically blowing up the numbers when he basically went to the most extreme, small calculations that have been determined by military personnel.
00:17:18.000When basically, the General Dempsey said, we don't do body counts.
00:17:22.000That's what he said during the Iraq War.
00:17:25.000So, yeah, it is really hard to tell how many people died, but the International Business Times did a study in 2006 that said a million were dead at that point.
00:17:35.000And they include, but they include Shia and Sunni infighting as well, right?
00:17:40.000Which is, a lot of it was caused by the Iraq War, which really triggered a huge amount of Civil unrest because there was a power struggle going on between the Sunni and the Shia, which was more under control when Saddam Hussein was in control of Iraq.
00:17:56.000That is calculated in that casualty figure that's talked about when it comes to the Iraq war.
00:18:08.000And I think that's one of the things that he argues against, that you can't attribute that to the United States military invasion, because it's sort of a side effect of the military invasion, the civil war that's going on there.
00:18:19.000Even though Cheney back in 1996 said, this is exactly what's going to happen if we invade Iraq.
00:18:26.000Saddam, we can never out him at this point because this is exactly what's going to happen.
00:18:30.000So it's like, yeah, you can say that was just a...
00:18:33.000The happenstance but the truth is everyone knew what was gonna happen so you know Well, I think that's what he's just saying that it's difficult to attribute that number to what the United States is responsible for because it's really civil war Based on a complete destabilization and destruction of an entire entire population an entire population that was run by an evil dictator and his homicidal sociopathic sons and And?
00:19:00.000Yeah, I mean, it was all gross before that, too.
00:19:03.000I mean, more people are dead now, but it was gross then, it's gross now.
00:19:07.000The whole part of the world is terrifying.
00:19:11.000You know, the thing about ISIS, did you see that shit where they blew up some ancient structures a couple days ago?
00:19:20.000Pull that up, because this is fucking terrifying.
00:19:23.000They beheaded some guy who's the head of antiquities in Syria.
00:19:28.000Apparently, this beloved guy who just was unwilling to bow to their demands, they behead this guy, and then they blew up some ancient monuments, some really well-preserved ancient structures that were,
00:22:36.000Yeah, now we're in Syria with ISIS. And Obama just issued this statement saying, like, we can now attack Assad forces while battling ISIS if we need to.
00:22:44.000So it's just another proxy war that's gotten completely out of hand.
00:22:48.000And now we have, like, look at these people that were, like, training, too.
00:23:00.000Basically training all these Syrian revolutionaries, all these people in these rebel groups, and then they go over, they either abandon post after we spend a shitload of money training them to fight ISIS, or they join ISIS. It's a complete disaster.
00:23:17.000Well, it's hard to get Muslims to fight against Muslims, you know, when their core values and their core beliefs and religion are so much a part of their life.
00:23:26.000And then they have these people that are telling them that you're supposed to fight these people that have these same core values that celebrate Ramadan, that believe in halal.
00:23:35.000They have the same ideas that these people have.
00:23:39.000It's like, it's way easier to stick with them.
00:23:42.000And some guy direct, some asshole directing you, McCain.
00:23:58.000It's just an amazing quagmire that we're in right now.
00:24:01.000It's so interesting, though, when you look at every civil war that's happened in the last 10 years, like Libya, and then you have Ukraine going on, Syria.
00:24:29.000You're about to, you're a part of a military decision that who knows how many fucking people it's gonna kill, whether or not it's gonna trigger World War III, whether it's gonna trigger a new nuclear war, and he's playing poker on his phone.
00:26:21.000Like Obama tried to crack a joke with him.
00:26:23.000They were sitting at some press conference and it's him and Obama sitting there and he just like looks at Obama and he's like, you're trying to make this funny right now and it's not or something like just like completely Obama's like sitting there nervously laughing.
00:26:35.000He was just like stop doing this be serious.
00:26:37.000You're like, okay He's killed a lot more people personally than Obama.
00:26:43.000I'm sure how many people do you think that guy's killed?
00:27:27.000It always shows those reflecting eyes.
00:27:32.000Well, you remember when that guy who's the guy that got murdered in broad daylight with his girlfriend that was Nobody remembers that's that's what happens when you kill Putin people just forget your name and it just Water under the bridge just vanish.
00:27:47.000That's a fucking crazy country right now Roy Jones Jr. is going to be a citizen.
00:27:54.000Roy Jones Jr. is going to be a citizen in Russia.
00:27:57.000Apparently, this is what he said, which is fucking hilarious.
00:28:00.000He goes, the people of Russia love Roy Jones Jr. I love it when people love me.
00:28:07.000It's like the dude who went to North Korea.
00:30:11.000I think he's a war criminal and I really strongly dislike Obama.
00:30:14.000I think he's like a great manipulator.
00:30:16.000You're a bit of a lefty there, Abby Martin.
00:30:19.000But I definitely think that, God, can you imagine who was just surrounding him at all times?
00:30:23.000Like he had Hillary Clinton barking in his ear, McCain, like these crazy neocons who are just like, we need more war.
00:30:29.000And I think that you saw all the neocon establishment really promoting Obama until the Syria thing happened where we backed down.
00:30:35.000And that's where you kind of saw this like ridiculous schism where now Netanyahu is coming to visit and it's like this crazy where Obama is like weak now.
00:31:47.000Yeah, and the moments he's dying, like the moments they captured him, and they're all screaming, and you're seeing something that no one has ever seen before.
00:31:59.000No one's ever seen a dictator captured by rebels.
00:32:10.000Jamie could pull it up right now, and we could kick back from the comfort of this Woodland Hills office suite and watch this fucking guy get bayoneted in his asshole.
00:32:42.000And, you know, we can see ISIS videos all day long of these crazy Hollywood style sets where people are getting beheaded and it's like in Gitmo jumpsuits and it's like this crazy fucking manifestation of like Hollywood culture and the military industrial complex rolled into one.
00:32:56.000But at the same time, you have our military uploading every drone strike on a fucking YouTube channel.
00:34:04.000All I know is that ISIS has gotten a shitload of US military equipment and billions of dollars.
00:34:08.000So maybe we should stop just a bit like, you know, all of the stuff that we've tried to train the Iraqi army, like it isn't working because they're abandoning posts and like ISIS is just taking large swaths of like equipment and Humvees and grenade launchers and shit.
00:34:23.000So, I mean, when I look at stuff like that happening, it's just like we just need to remove ourselves from the situation and let like allied states that are in the area really take hold of Of what's going on.
00:34:40.000If you look at what's going on with ISIS right now, I mean, when they're decapitating the Syrian head of antiquities and blowing up these ancient, cherished monuments, is there justifiable war?
00:34:51.000Can you go in there and stop these bad guys?
00:34:53.000I don't think there is a justifiable war.
00:34:54.000Well, war with ISIS because ISIS was created out of the vacuum of just a large war and countless casualties and refugees and the civil war thing that happened there.
00:35:05.000So I think that ISIS is a direct result of US military intervention.
00:35:09.000So I think that more US military intervention to stop ISIS is just going to exacerbate the problem.
00:35:13.000And I definitely do not think that that should be an option whatsoever.
00:35:26.000First it was al-Qaeda, now it's like ISIS is pulling at people's heartstrings so much because they're seeing these crazy images and it's like, how can we just sit back and do nothing?
00:35:35.000The thing is, there's genocides happening in the Congo.
00:35:38.000Are we going to go invade and take out...
00:35:41.000I mean, it's just like, why are we picking and choosing what we're putting in front of the TV screens and brainwashing everyone and saying, what are you going to do about ISIS? First it was fucking Ebola.
00:35:58.000There's so much going on, I just think, to hone in on ISIS and just say, like, we all need to focus on destroying ISIS militarily is just a farce, because A, it came out of military intervention, and B, we're not going to fucking destroy ISIS. It's just going to galvanize more people to join ISIS. That's why their recruiting is so high across the world.
00:36:19.000They're being drawn to ISIS because of the endless warfare going on.
00:36:23.000So I just think, I don't have the answers.
00:36:26.000I do think that regional players need to take a step in.
00:36:30.000That means Syria, that means Iraq, people in the region that understand the region and are not coming from this neocolonial lens and just like, all we have is military solutions because that's all we fucking know!
00:36:50.000I don't think that there's any clear solution, and I think that's a real part of the problem.
00:36:56.000I think that everybody who looks at ISIS decapitating this Syria head of antiquities and blowing up monuments and lighting people on fire with slow motion.
00:37:05.000I mean, did you see that video that they did where they have slow motion video cameras, like complicated techniques, where they're showing these people getting It lit on fire.
00:37:15.000I mean, what they're doing is promoting terror.
00:37:18.000They're trying to scare people, and they're doing it with these videos.
00:37:21.000The videos of decapitations and assassinations.
00:40:30.000But what's truly amazing is how much ignorance was involved in the testing process, the initial bombs that they blew up in the desert where they had soldiers run at the bombs.
00:41:06.000See if you can find those, Jamie, because they're amazing.
00:41:08.000No, they didn't do it because they didn't think it was going to affect them.
00:41:11.000They were teaching them to run towards the blast.
00:41:13.000The idea would be that this nuclear bomb would go off, everybody would be disoriented and fucked up, and that these American G.I.s would run in there and take over!
00:43:18.000My god look at like the not just the plume, but those crazy like light or smoke formations to the left You know what my favorite one is the one that they did in the ocean Yeah, the one they didn't really know how much of an impact it was gonna have they fucking just tried shit Yeah,
00:43:34.000you know just like they tried this see if you could find the ocean the video of the ocean nuclear explosions that they did I think they did it off of Guam I think that's where it was I don't remember though, but they they had all these Battleships that they stationed around where the bombs would go off.
00:43:54.000And when they did it, everything got fucked up.
00:43:59.000I mean, everything anywhere near it got fucked up.
00:45:25.000It's just a really, really horrifying museum because we grow up...
00:45:27.000That is probably the biggest myth that we grow up learning is that the bombs were necessary to end the war and that they saved lives and It's just like a way to legitimize a really horrific atrocity.
00:45:43.000Well, the issue is that Japan was already willing to surrender and that we didn't want them to surrender because we wanted to try the bombs out.
00:45:51.000Whether or not that's true, that's the big debate.
00:45:54.000And that's something that a lot of people...
00:45:57.000We still to this day argue back and forth on whether or not it's actually the case.
00:46:02.000If it is the case, it's even more horrific, because just like what they wanted to do in the ocean, where they tried that bomb out and watched a mile-high wave of water overcome that fucking battleship, they wanted to see what happens when you drop that shit on a city.
00:46:25.000It's just these people kind of holding on to this last ditch like gasp of air just to hold on to like American exceptionalism.
00:46:31.000And it really just is totally debunked at this point because even Truman himself instilled an atomic bomb survey.
00:46:36.000University of Colorado featured a compilation of just like dozens of American military experts and leaders Internal interviews, diaries, other declassified materials basically involved in the bomb decision and all of them had one unanimous commonality among them that every single one said the bomb was not of military necessity and it did not need to happen for the surrender that Japan was ready to surrender.
00:46:56.000Because if you remember, I think like 100,000 or maybe 80,000 people were incinerated in Tokyo just weeks prior with the firebombing.
00:47:04.000So the US had already dropped all these bombs, basically eviscerated Tokyo.
00:47:11.000Way more people actually died then in the initial atomic bomb drops.
00:47:15.000So it's just a really, really unfortunate kind of thing that's perpetuated and people just still hold on to it.
00:47:21.000You know, they say it would have saved lives.
00:47:22.000It's like, well, it would have saved U.S. soldiers' lives, but instead it took like probably half a million Japanese, if you look at the countless maimed and radiation poisoning.
00:47:33.000I mean, I think like 80,000 died instantly with the incineration of the blasts.
00:47:40.000The only argument that could be said that it saved lives is that it kept other people from using nuclear weapons because they're so horrific.
00:47:48.000Otherwise, you look at all the war that has taken place since 1947 and not one person has used a nuclear bomb, it could be argued that it was because how horrific that was when it did happen.
00:47:58.000But that's not a really good argument.
00:47:59.000And it's also, like, irritating that the U.S. is the one fear-mongering the world about, like, he can't have a nuclear bomb, he can, he can't, and it's like, well, you guys are the only ones who've only used them twice, so why are we the arbitrators of who and who cannot utilize nuclear weapons?
00:48:14.000Well, we're righteous, and plus, we're one nation under God.
00:49:12.000The Chris Giles thing is so crazy because it's like, I don't think Jesse Ventura got like threats saying they're going to cut his dick in half.
00:52:31.000It doesn't mean that there aren't heroes.
00:52:34.000It doesn't mean that the military is bad.
00:52:36.000It doesn't mean that there aren't people that genuinely go into the military, like I'm sure your boyfriend did, thinking that they're going to do good, that they have these ideals that they want to protect.
00:52:44.000They want to protect liberty and they believe in the American way of life.
00:52:48.000And then, you know, it all gets convoluted because you're either with us or against us.
00:53:05.000These people who are making these decisions are not us.
00:53:07.000I mean, we have more in solidarity with the people in Iraq than we do with the elite that are making these decisions.
00:53:12.000Yeah, the people that are complete neocons, that are complete chicken hawks, that are outside of the consequences of war, that are the ones pulling the strings.
00:53:22.000I think that there's a big problem with just the militarization of our society, where we have, you know, every sports game has this giant military, just like...
00:54:02.000Riots in the streets or like, you know, let's send the fucking militarized riot cops who just got trained next to Israeli troops in Bahrain.
00:54:11.000I mean, we need to start really removing ourselves with this kind of militaristic, I don't know, characterization of our society because it's really fucking toxic, man.
00:54:21.000Well, and also, it creates military problems abroad because the rest of the world identifies us with that as well.
00:54:27.000And if we're doing shit like what we've done in the Iraq War, which, whatever the number is, whether it's Sam Harris's number, the one that he adheres to, or whether it's the one that the far left adheres to, It's a lot of fucking people.
00:54:43.000And those people, it creates, without a doubt, martyrs.
00:54:47.000And it creates, without a doubt, support for the opposition.
00:54:50.000Because we're looked at, in other parts of the world, as the dark empire.
00:54:55.000And also, if they're Muslim and they support Muslim ideals, and then they see that these people, who are of a completely different faith, are attacking and invading their homeland, It's pretty easy to support that.
00:55:10.000And then it just piles on, and next thing you know, we got a problem.
00:55:14.000And we got a current problem, and we have a past problem, and we got a future problem.
00:55:18.000And we have a military-industrial complex that's just fucking raking it in and loves problems.
00:55:24.000Because problems means we get to make more missiles, and more missiles means more money, and it keeps going.
00:55:43.000But one of the best parts about it was McGovern, when he was recounting his days with Hunter, when Hunter was writing that...
00:55:52.000Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, and he followed around the press corps for a year and wrote that book.
00:55:58.000But McGovern was just talking about how he was just sick and tired of old men in air-conditioned buildings making decisions that are to send young men off to war.
00:56:11.000And I'll just never forget the way he was saying that.
00:56:15.000And you know, McGovern, when he was doing that, He was an old guy when they were doing that documentary.
00:56:22.000He died in 2012. But he was old when they were doing that documentary.
00:56:27.000And he was just, I'm just tired of it.
00:56:56.000One of the reasons why he didn't win is because his vice presidential candidate turned out that he had undergone shock therapy, electrical shock therapy, and kind of hid that from everybody, and it came out during the campaign.
00:57:30.000Yeah, and that Ed Muskie was clearly exhibiting signs, and it was really funny because they interviewed Hunter on one of these, in the documentary, he's on one of these talk shows.
00:57:40.000He goes, well, there was a rumor that Ed Muskie was addicted to Ibogaine, and I started the rumor.
00:57:51.000But he was a journalist, but he wasn't.
00:57:53.000I mean, he was a journalist, but he was writing fiction.
00:57:56.000But he was like, I thought everybody knew.
00:57:58.000I thought everybody knew it was bullshit.
00:58:04.000He's one of my favorite people that's ever lived.
00:58:07.000And he knew it was bullshit, but he thought...
00:58:10.000Other people knew it was bullshit, but he also knew that he could make an impact with this.
00:58:14.000So he thought that Muskie was just this fucking ridiculous hack.
00:58:18.000So he just mocked him and talked about him being under the throes of this addiction, that he had brought in this Brazilian doctor, and...
00:58:27.000And then Muskie, like, had these breakdowns on the campaign trail, because he was dealing with the...
00:58:32.000Because nobody had ever dealt with that kind of negativity from the press before.
00:58:36.000Nobody ever running for president had dealt with just someone fabricating craziness about them.
00:58:41.000And it's the pressure of this, you could tell he wasn't...
00:58:44.000Like, I don't even know where to start.
00:58:45.000Today, if you run for president and you don't have a thick skin, you can't deal with people getting mad at you on Twitter, making shit up about you in the HuffPost or whatever they would want to do, you really shouldn't be running for president.
00:58:56.000You have to develop some sort of rhino skin at this point in time.
00:59:00.000Those people didn't know what the fuck to do.
00:59:02.000There had only been a few presidents that were on TV. And they don't have the billion dollar campaigns where they have a spin master trying to skew it all.
00:59:09.000When you think about 1972, how many fucking presidential candidates had even been on television?
01:00:42.000Yeah, I mean arguably right up there the most powerful figurehead in the world if not the most powerful Certainly top four or five just thought of something really fucking crazy The bomb that we saw the atomic bomb that was obviously dropped on Hiroshima Nagasaki We have that's like fucking baby shit.
01:01:20.000What's even more fucked up is the research they've done into antimatter weapons.
01:01:25.000That's really crazy because we don't know whether or not this is just theoretical.
01:01:30.000Bring me one of them alcoholic beverages too, young Jamie.
01:01:34.000We don't know whether or not it's theoretical or whether this is actually proof of concept, whether antimatter can be developed into a weapon.
01:01:41.000We do know there's research being done on it.
01:01:43.000And when they do develop antimatter research...
01:01:47.000I mean, when they do develop antimatter weapons, whether it's in our lifetime or in the future lifetimes, you're talking about a world destroyer.
01:01:53.000We're talking about something they might just shoot over at Pluto.
01:01:56.000Like, you know, it'll take nine years and we'll watch Pluto blow up from the sky just to see if we can do it.
01:02:02.000That's very possible they might do that someday.
01:02:04.000Just decide to launch it in some fucking planet.
01:02:07.000Well, do you know that that's a justification?
01:02:09.000I think the expectation for continuing the trillion dollars that they're going to spend just updating and refurbishing the nuclear arsenal is that they keep doubling down on the fucking Star Wars fantasy that Reagan had.
01:02:19.000Gorbachev went to Reagan and he was like, let's disarm.
01:02:22.000And Reagan was like, no, I'm senile and I want to create this giant Star Wars program that's going to like You know, like this shield in the sky and we're going to do this and that.
01:02:31.000And everyone was like, all right, it's never gonna fucking work.
01:02:53.000Like, if you have something, you don't annihilate it.
01:02:57.000If you have something that has mass, it's five miles across, you're going to develop a hundred, you know, half-mile ones or whatever, you know, or 500-yard ones.
01:03:06.000And they're going to kill everybody, too.
01:03:29.000No, go ahead, just do your pee and I'll have Jamie pull this up.
01:03:33.000Pull up, I want you to pull up the Star Wars scientists that have been killed.
01:03:40.000Star Wars scientists that have either been murdered or committed suicide.
01:03:46.000Because what's really fascinating about the Star Wars program is I'll have to at least slightly reiterate this when young Abby Martin gets back because I don't think she is completely aware of this but when the Star Wars weapons defense system was created the idea behind it was the United States was going to create a military they were going to create some sort of a military solution with satellites that could shoot
01:04:16.000these missiles out of the sky now While they were doing it they were spending fuck loads of money on this and apparently it was never effective and If you you could pull up the numbers just pull up like there's a list of all the Star Wars see if you could find a better article See like that who killed all the Star Wars?
01:04:38.000Scientists here's see if you could find out could go to like a rents is rents legit R-E-N-S-E is not like a super conspiracy website Mysterious deaths of scientists.
01:06:11.000The Star Wars program, they had spent millions, untold billions of dollars to develop this completely ineffective system to shoot missiles out of the sky.
01:07:25.000Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Godley, expertise, head of work-study union at the Royal College of Military Science, circumstance of death, disappeared mysteriously.
01:08:51.000If the people are interested in going over to some place that we don't belong, killing people, the idea that they're not going to kill you because you want to stop them from killing people, that's crazy.
01:09:08.000Pat Tillman's brother believes that Pat Tillman was killed because he was speaking up because he was a very public figure and then he was speaking out against the war.
01:09:15.000You know, that's going back to the little Chris Cowell thing because every single myth that has been resurrected out of the Iraq invasion has been like, you know, the Pat Tillman thing.
01:09:24.000They were so hard and on for Pat Tillman because he really was a fucking hero.
01:09:29.000I mean, he's abandoning like a million dollar career.
01:09:31.000To go fight, you know, because he really believed it.
01:09:34.000And he's really fucking smart, and he realized that it was based on lies and shit, and he had this diary, and it's an incredible documentary that just talks about his transition, and people who knew him, and when he was changing his mind, and he had this diary all written up, and they fucking burned it, dude.
01:09:48.000When they killed him, if they did, they say it was friendly fire, who knows?
01:09:53.000But his brother thinks that it was targeted, I don't know.
01:09:55.000But he definitely would have come out and been, like, another, like, Chomsky.
01:09:58.000Like, he would have come out and said...
01:10:00.000He would have been a figurehead against the war and he died from friendly fire and then they burned all of his shit.
01:10:06.000They burned his diary so we can never know.
01:10:13.000And they said she was raped and all of a sudden she was like the Iraqi like military was like helping her just put her in a hospital and like taking care of her.
01:10:23.000The narrative was that she was trapped and she was being kidnapped by the Iraqis and that the United States military went in and rescued her.
01:10:30.000And she was this hero and she was paraded around on television, but she spoke out against it and she got death threats and she essentially vanished and she just went quiet on it and they never talked to her again.
01:10:42.000It's so sad, too, because they chose her.
01:10:44.000They're like, we're going to prop you up as this person.
01:11:28.000If you're in the military and you are supposed to go over there and shoot some bad guys, whether they're good or bad guys, you're going to go murder those people.
01:11:44.000When you don't like someone and you kill them, we want to lock you up.
01:11:47.000But if we tell you you can kill someone, as long as it's written down on paper and we all collectively agree, but we don't really collectively agree.
01:11:55.000There's a small group of people that decide who you can and can't kill, and then everybody else has to fall in line.
01:12:01.000Well, if those people were beyond reproach, if they were these incredibly enlightened people that had only our best wishes and hopes in mind and could not make a bad decision, Well, then it makes sense to just give in to them.
01:13:51.000And the Pentagon just issued this field manual to basically for all the branches in the military and in it, I guess, because citizen journalism is like on the rise and it's really hard to distinguish like who is like an official established journalist or not.
01:14:02.000Or who's like embedded with the enemy.
01:14:04.000And they basically said that journalists can be killed legally now by US military personnel.
01:14:31.000I get it if they're absolutely honest and beyond reproach and the most enlightened beings in the world that are dictating what these actions would be.
01:14:41.000I mean, if you have some fucking Hitler character over there and you want to assassinate him, I get it.
01:15:40.000When they look back at us in the future, when they, you know, civilizations 100, 200 years from now, look back at what we're, you know, when we look back at World War II and looking at these people that were running towards this bomb, you know, we look at them like, fuck, man, these poor bastards.
01:15:55.000What are they going to think about us?
01:16:12.000It's just in the realm of reality television where we're trying to empathize with this fat lady, but really we're just watching a giant whale live her life and it's just like the circus.
01:16:23.000And it's the same with horror movies and shit.
01:16:26.000We don't have the Coliseum, but we still like people being ripped limb from limb.
01:16:48.000Because I'll watch the, I'm walking on sunshine, the episode of the girls doing the duster, and I'm like, alright, I guess I don't feel bad about smoking this much weed, because I'm I'm not eating tape.
01:17:00.000Yeah, have you ever seen that fucking My Strange Addiction?
01:17:17.000I wonder what it is about human beings that when everything is great and you have too much resources and it's too easy to get food, we just start getting really fucking strange.
01:18:08.000It's probably bullshit, most likely, but sounds from the sky, like crazy, like horns, and people are trying to figure out what these sounds were.
01:18:17.000Well, they took a video, this one guy sent in this video, where he was just, it was actually, it's really hilarious, because the one guy that they put the video, he was like a chemtrail believer.
01:19:42.000And it's so interesting, Joe, because I had an agent for a little while looking for work and stuff, and every single thing, because I guess I come from the same questioning government narratives, and oh shit, you're tinfoil hot wearer if you fucking question what the government tells you.
01:20:02.000I'm like, isn't there anything else fucking happening other than like the same five fucking things that you guys want to create shows around?
01:22:04.000I don't think like, I think a lot of substances are just not, that's why vitamins, if you get vitamins, like most vitamins, you look at them, they're not really effective after like six months or a year.
01:22:14.000They become less and less effective over time.
01:22:17.000I'm pretty sure that's the case with LSD. Don't Don't quote me on it, though.
01:22:33.000They go bad, even if they bake them down into a cookie.
01:22:37.000You put that cookie in a piece of plastic, try to eat it a couple years from now.
01:22:40.000We just took this epic road trip and got back this morning, which was amazing, but I wanted to tell your audience just about the Utah thing because it was so funny.
01:22:48.000I mean, here you are in these fucking massive rock formations carved by millions of years of water, sandstone, fucking...
01:23:00.000Like, anyone who has not been to Utah, you need to go.
01:23:02.000Bryce Canyon National Park is one of the most absurd things I've ever seen.
01:23:05.000It's like these things called hoodoos that are just carved over millions of years with a stone.
01:23:08.000Anyway, Arches National Park, obviously that iconic, like, all the orange arches that are carved in...
01:23:14.000Millions of years like we can carbon date them.
01:23:16.000We know the geological processes very easy to explain through science So we're reading the official park literature and I'm just like man I'm like so so fascinated like how did this form and so like crazy and it makes you just like Appreciate time like that's what the desert is like you fucking appreciate time Like that is it's like you look at that and that's the top of the grand staircase Joe.
01:23:35.000That's the newest part of the grand staircase That's amazing.
01:23:40.000It looks like a standing army Yeah, people that are just listening to this, what it looks like, obviously it's not, but it looks like something that someone has designed.
01:25:18.000So I was just like, holy shit, like, has the Mormon lobby just lobbied all the fucking parks in Utah, which are the best parks in the country and the most amazing state, and basically forced them to say, none of this is real.
01:25:31.000Joseph Smith in 1820 was 14 years old.
01:25:34.000He found golden tablets that contained the lost work of Jesus.
01:25:38.000The Israeli people came over from the Bering Strait in Siberia.
01:25:56.000They even tested, this guy was this rich Mormon dude, tested Native American DNA to try to prove that they were Israeli and that they were the lost tribes of Israel.
01:28:44.000Wandering around in Mexico at the Romney Ranch.
01:28:46.000Mitt Romney actually has a really interesting story, because he, at Bain Capital, when he ran Bain Capital, he was, like, taken in and trained by Monsanto executives.
01:28:57.000I think he was given his first big loan by a Monsanto executive, and then he was like, all right, y'all, you guys are a fucking toxic chemical company, fucking Agent Orange, all this shit, real bad.
01:29:08.000Why don't we shift this over to food now?
01:29:10.000So he basically was behind this giant PR push to switch Monsanto over from chemicals to biotech, which is really interesting to be like, why is Mitt Romney's in the fold?
01:29:21.000You know, it's just like super weird that he was just like right there in the wings kind of helping foster this transition is super weird.
01:30:46.000Yeah, I mean, the whole thing is just like, yeah, it's like abortion's legal, and I would rather them utilize the tissue for something that's scientific instead of just throwing it in the garbage can, so...
01:30:58.000I think what a lot of people were worried about, not just this, is that they were going to somehow or another influence people to do it for money, influence people to have abortions for money.
01:31:15.000Like Planned Parenthood, wasn't the whole issue that Planned Parenthood was making money selling the tissue, but then they said that that wasn't true?
01:31:23.000If there was some black market thing where people could have abortions and sell the tissue, I just don't...
01:31:28.000Yeah, it's super confusing because the video implies that Planned Parenthood was profiting off of it and that this woman was trying to say that she could sort of structure it so they could make more money.
01:31:39.000Look, all I know is Planned Parenthood's fucking great, okay?
01:34:46.000Fluke, a third-year law student at Georgetown, is now the flashpoint in a debate about whether employers should be required to fully cover contraception even if they have religious objectives.
01:34:56.000I like how he truncated it to she wants to get paid to have sex.
01:35:54.000The fucking judge literally told him when he was sentencing him that he was listening to Rush Limbaugh on the way over and how Rush was saying that we have to give drug abusers a wake-up call and that drug abusers need to know that there's consequences for their actions.
01:36:12.000So because of this, I'm gonna fucking sentence you for X amount of blah blah blah blah blah.
01:36:16.000And the guy got released because of overcrowding.
01:36:22.000But this was right before Rush got popped for chewing like 90 oxys a day and having his fucking maid go out and buy him for him with her assumed names.
01:36:33.000She's wearing a fake mustache and shit.
01:41:27.000And he, like, refused to take down the signpost.
01:41:29.000People, when he was running for president, people were like, are you gonna do, like, a rebranding effort about, like, the ranch that your family owns?
01:41:35.000And he was like, it's all, like, historical.
01:44:03.000It's like, yeah, I'm sure that you've seen, you know, you've traveled to a lot of countries, seen a lot of horrible poverty, went to Haiti, saw bad things, but then there's really nothing that compares to Skid Row because it's this crazy community Living on the fucking street just taking over downtown LA like excess of humanity that's just spilled out Mentally ill drug.
01:44:24.000I mean, they're just like shooting up in the street taking a shit It's it's fucking nuts thousands of them thousands Yeah, and it's blocks and blocks and blocks just like society is just like abandoned this portion of their people It's very surreal and really scary and we live right by there.
01:44:39.000It's an interesting thing You know someone wants to look them and go how do we capitalize in this market?
01:44:44.000They all have similar interests It's a fucking crazy scene.
01:45:00.000I remember the first time I was there, we were filming Fear Factory downtown and we were real close to it and someone brought it up and we drove by and I was like, you gotta be I'm fucking kidding.
01:45:43.000Yeah, well, there's a lot of mentally ill people.
01:45:46.000During the Reagan administration, they sort of changed the rules for what made you mentally ill and what, you know, what the distinctions were, and that's when they sort of opened up the doors and let all these people out on the street.
01:45:55.000I remember it, like, really, really clearly when I was a kid, because there was a big debate, like, oh, like, wait a minute, you can't, there's a lot of people that are like, you can't fucking do this, you can't just change the classification For people that have mental illness, but they did and all throughout New York and Boston there was like all these like new Mentally ill people wandering around the streets.
01:46:19.000Yeah there I just read the statistic that homelessness has gone up like 25% in the last four years and just in LA of people living in homes on freeway overpasses and shit and I remember like I posted I swear to god and I remember I posted and someone was like dude just move out they can't afford LA just move out and I'm like We can't afford to move.
01:46:39.000Once you go homeless, you don't have any money.
01:46:44.000Dude, speaking of, really quickly before we wrap it up, I wanted to tell you, we should talk about Cuba next time because I went there and did a whole report on it, but zero homelessness.
01:46:51.000That was the most iconic thing about being in Cuba.
01:47:37.000And I was like, no, it's not like a brave new world where babies are born in incubators and like trained to be like, you're a doctor, you're a florist, you're this.
01:48:49.000Like, they have, like, all organics, and they've, like, like, maintained these old cars, and they, like, don't let anything break down and shit.
01:48:55.000So they've also developed, instead of invading countries and bombing the shit out of people, they've also developed an entire, like, medical thing for their, like, So they basically lease out doctors around the world.
01:49:06.000Even when you go back to, you know, the Haiti earthquake, they were the first country that sent out the biggest contingent of doctors.
01:49:44.000We've created a fake Twitter called Zunzunio that's tried to get people against Castro.
01:49:49.000But the most disturbing part is this medical internationalism, where you have 75,000 doctors Working around the world on all these fronts and the US has created a law that said you can defect to the US and become a doctor here and just leave your post.
01:50:04.000So it's like why are we trying to like subvert like actual medical missions and humanitarian missions that Cuba is doing?
01:50:10.000Really the only reason is because we want to subvert the socialist government that survived after the Cold War that we still fucking can't accept.
01:50:19.000And there's also the wet foot, dry foot policy that offers Cuban immigrants, no other immigrant in the world has this, where you can just come here and just be an American citizen if you're Cuban.
01:50:42.000I did not know that that's fascinating it's really fascinating you should have a conversation with Joey Diaz he'd be fucking screaming right yeah came over on a boat yeah and you know a lot of people Look, when you're Cuban and you're on a ration system and you're living in this country that's kind of isolated and you're like watching American movies and you're like,
01:51:01.000why the fuck am I here when I can be there?
01:51:04.000You know, and you're seeing mountains of cocaine and AKs and shit and you're like, why are you...
01:51:09.000But the problem is a lot of doctors defect and they come over here and then they're caught for years and years and years.
01:51:16.000They end up being like a waitress in a restaurant for a decade trying to become a practicing doctor.
01:51:22.000But when I was over there, not only do they have free healthcare obviously for everyone in the country, but they also have an international medical school that trains doctors.
01:51:29.000Whoever wants to train all over the world can go and just be a doctor for free.
01:51:32.000So I met like 20 Americans who were there and I was like, why are you here getting your medical license?
01:51:36.000And they're like, because I don't want to fucking be $100,000 in debt in America.
01:51:41.000And they're like, I'm here to get my medical license so then I can go train and be a doctor.
01:51:47.000So, a lot of shit can be talked about how things are run, but it's a totally different society when you have basic needs met and when healthcare and, like, humans come first out of necessity because of the blockade, because they had to create this, not necessarily of altruism,
01:52:03.000but it's evolved into such an insane just dichotomy of how society has, like, functioned.
01:52:19.000So now they've lifted travel restrictions.
01:52:20.000And now Raul has like opened up some private enterprise and stuff.
01:52:23.000And that was a whole diplomatic process within the country, too, where they lifted some economic things.
01:52:28.000So now private businesses can flourish.
01:52:30.000And so it's opening up because they've realized that they can't obviously have it like that forever, especially now that the travel's lifted.
01:52:36.000But it's going to be really interesting to see what happens, especially now that the U.S. still has this subversion tactics going on, these programs in place that encourage people to defect, and then also Gitmo.
01:52:45.000It's a perpetual occupation of fucking Cuba that Raul has said time and again, give us Guantanamo Bay, you leased it under false pretenses, we really want it back, and the U.S. says it's off the table.
01:53:40.000and they never accepted a dime they never cashed a dime for the rent of the lease after the 1956 or whatever the um the revolution was so yeah it was it was that's really disturbing to me because i'm like dude just give them back i'm going to pay like you can pretend that we're normal with cuba but it's never going to be normal unless you give them some respect and if you're so scared of socialism and if you are so sure that socialism is a failure then let them fail on their own lift the blockade and let Let's Cuba just function,
01:54:08.000But right now, it's been so crippled in so many ways that it's impossible to really know what the country would be like without U.S. interference.
01:54:15.000Well, it's very bizarre that we're allowed to trade with all sorts of different countries that are accused of all sorts of different heinous crimes against humanity, but we can't with Cuba.
01:54:25.000I mean, just think about all the different countries that we're allowed to trade with.
01:55:22.000I guess not 15. For the first time in the country's history, women in Saudi Arabia have been given the right to vote and stand as political candidates in the upcoming elections.