0:01

The majority report with

0:03

Sam Cedar. It

0:07

is Thursday, May 9th, 2024. My

0:12

name is Emma Vigeland in for Sam Cedar,

0:14

and this is the five-time award-winning majority report.

0:18

We are broadcasting live steps

0:21

from the industrially ravaged Gowanus

0:23

Canal in the heartland of

0:25

America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On

0:29

the program today, Rachel Nolan, author

0:31

of Until I Find You, Disappeared

0:34

Children and Coercive Adoptions in Guatemala.

0:37

And later in the show, Raga Makawi will

0:39

be back with us to update us on

0:41

Sudan one year into its

0:44

brutal war. Also

0:47

on the program today, Biden finally

0:49

threatens to withhold weapons sales to

0:51

Israel if they invade Rafa and

0:54

admits US bombs have been used

0:56

to kill civilians. So

0:59

I guess Biden's Hamas now, at

1:02

least that's what Israeli officials like

1:05

Ben Gavir are saying, tweeting

1:07

Biden heart emoji, Hamas, hours

1:10

ago. Meanwhile,

1:13

Israel continues to seal the Rafa

1:15

crossing to stop food

1:19

and aid. And

1:24

people are starving, dying

1:27

of malnutrition. And

1:29

protesters in Tel Aviv ramp

1:32

up anti-Bibi demonstrations.

1:36

Ohio's Republican attorney general threatens

1:38

to use an anti-KKK law

1:41

to charge student protesters for

1:44

Palestine wearing face masks with

1:47

felonies. In

1:50

Ireland, Trinity College has agreed to

1:52

divest from Israel an enormous win

1:55

for BDS and the student protests

1:57

around the world. Surprise!

2:00

Marjorie Taylor Greene forced

2:03

the vote on Mike

2:05

Johnson and failed miserably.

2:08

Democrats helped Johnson out there in exchange

2:10

for getting Ukraine aid over the hump, but

2:13

made no promises about the next

2:15

time around. A

2:19

Georgia appeals court will hear Trump's

2:21

bid to disqualify Fonny Willis

2:23

from prosecuting him. Trump's

2:27

2017 tax cuts for the rich are

2:29

expected to expand the deficit to

2:31

nearly $4 trillion over 10

2:34

years, the CBO says. Vermont

2:37

becomes the first state

2:40

to demand oil companies pay for

2:42

damages caused by climate change. Progressive

2:46

challengers to Eric Adams begin to line

2:48

up. Zelna Myrie,

2:50

state senator from Brooklyn, says he'll

2:52

run. And

2:54

lastly, Kristi Noem cuts her book

2:57

tour short, citing

2:59

inclement weather. And

3:02

it's set in the D.C. and New York

3:04

area. I'm looking out the window right now. It's not

3:06

very inclement. A lot of haters in

3:09

the forecast. All this and

3:12

more on today's program.

3:17

Welcome to the show, everybody. It

3:20

is an majority report Thursday. Let's

3:22

get right to it because we

3:24

have some great guests for you

3:26

and we have some enormous news

3:28

from last night. Biden

3:30

went on CNN to announce that the U.S.

3:33

will stop sending Israel certain

3:35

offensive weaponry, artillery shells,

3:37

bombs for fighter jets, other

3:40

offensive weapons because

3:43

of the pending Rafa

3:45

invasion. He specifies

3:47

population centers in Rafa. That's

3:50

one caveat I want to bring to the forefront here.

3:52

More on that in a second. But

3:56

as a reminder, Rafa is currently home to

3:58

600,000 shells. children, 1.4 million

4:01

people sheltering. This

4:03

was supposedly the safe space that they

4:05

were supposed

4:08

to go, according to the IDF.

4:10

It's their last refuge. And

4:13

according to the United Nations,

4:16

no aid trucks have entered Gaza

4:18

since Sunday. So

4:21

they're already starving them to

4:23

death. And a

4:26

ground invasion has long rumored to

4:28

be the red line for the Biden administration on

4:32

supplying arms. Significantly,

4:34

in Biden's public statement, you'll hear

4:36

this in a second, he finally

4:38

admitted that the 2,000 pound

4:40

bombs that the US has been sending to

4:43

Israel have been used to kill civilians. And

4:46

this is, by the way,

4:48

consisting with a report from December 1st,

4:50

that came out from the office

4:53

of the Director of National Intelligence, and it

4:55

was leaked to CNN, showing

4:59

that nearly half of the bombs dropped

5:01

in Gaza are dumb bombs, massive, imprecise

5:04

bombs, imprecise weaponry on

5:06

purpose, designed to kill as many

5:09

people as possible. But this

5:11

is an important moment

5:13

because Biden finally, seven

5:15

months into a genocide, acknowledges this

5:17

reality. I want to ask you

5:19

about something happening as we sit here and speak,

5:21

and that, of course, Israel

5:24

is striking Rafa. I know that you

5:26

have paused, Mr. President, shipments of 2,000

5:29

pound US bomb to

5:31

Israel due to concern that they could

5:33

be used in any offensive on Rafa.

5:36

Have those bombs, those powerful 2,000 pound

5:39

bombs, been used to kill civilians

5:41

in Gaza? Civilians

5:43

have been killed in Gaza, the consequences

5:46

of those bombs and other ways

5:48

in which they go after population centers.

5:51

I made it clear that if

5:54

they go into Rafa, they haven't gone into Rafa

5:56

yet. If they go into Rafa,

5:59

I'm not supplying them. the weapons that have

6:01

been used historically to deal with Raffa, to

6:03

deal with the cities, to deal with that

6:05

problem. We're going to continue

6:07

to make sure Israel is secure in terms

6:09

of iron dome and their ability

6:11

to respond to attacks that came out

6:13

of the, uh, in,

6:16

uh, the Middle East recently. But

6:18

it's, uh, it's just wrong. We're not

6:20

going to, we're not going to supply

6:23

the weapons and artillery shells used that

6:25

have been used. Artillery shells as well.

6:27

Yeah, artillery shells. So

6:31

just to understand what they're doing right now

6:33

in Raffa, is that not

6:35

going into Raffa as, as you don't have

6:37

yet? They haven't gone in the population centers, but

6:39

they did this right on the border and

6:42

it's causing problems with right now in

6:45

terms of when Egypt, which I've worked

6:47

very hard to make sure we have

6:49

a relationship and help. But,

6:51

uh, I've made it clear to BB and the

6:53

war cabinet, they're not going to get our

6:55

support if in fact they're going to

6:57

these population centers. We're not walking

7:00

away from Israel's security, walking away from

7:02

Israel's ability to wage war in those

7:05

areas. So it's not over your red line yet? Not

7:08

yet, but it's, we've,

7:10

we've held up the weapons. We've

7:14

held up the one shipment as

7:17

an old shipment, and it's been designed. We

7:19

held that up. And

7:22

so I want to put aside

7:24

my fury for a second that this didn't happen

7:27

sooner. The distinction about the population centers, I think

7:29

is important, but I can't gloss over this key

7:31

fact. This does mark, I

7:33

think, one of the most significant shifts in the

7:35

U S Israel relationship in

7:38

the short history of the

7:41

state of Israel and our patronage of

7:43

it's the settler colonial project. It

7:45

took them committing an active genocide

7:47

to get to this break. And

7:50

Biden has insisted on hugging Israel

7:53

and Netanyahu literally by the way,

7:55

but publicly while behind the scenes,

7:58

trying to pressure them. But

8:00

clearly, they're beginning hopefully to understand that

8:02

the intent is not to wage a

8:05

war against Hamas, it's to commit

8:07

a genocide. And so it's quite

8:09

difficult to reason with people who

8:12

are attempting to exterminate

8:14

a population in whole or

8:17

in part. And this sheds

8:19

new light on something that

8:21

a report that came

8:23

out in Axios from Barak Ravid, who

8:25

again, works intimately with the White House

8:27

and puts out exactly what they want

8:29

to have out there in

8:31

to the public. That is his role and it's

8:33

why he got an award at the White House

8:35

Correspondents Dinner a few weeks ago. In

8:39

the background of all of this were these

8:41

ceasefire negotiations. Now some of this is speculation

8:43

here, but it's informed by this article

8:46

and I think you can pretty

8:48

easily read between the lines, which

8:50

showed that Israel was, quote, frustrated

8:53

with how the US was handling

8:56

the hostage talks and it

8:58

opens here. Israeli officials

9:00

claim the Biden administration knew about

9:03

the latest hostage and ceasefire deal

9:05

proposal Egypt and Qatar negotiated with

9:07

Hamas, but didn't brief Israel before

9:10

Hamas announced it accepted

9:12

on Monday. A senior

9:14

US official pushback saying American diplomats

9:16

have been engaged with Israeli counterparts,

9:18

there have been no surprises. So

9:20

either Israel is lying, which I'm

9:22

sure they are in part, or

9:25

it's both. Israel is lying

9:27

that they were engaging in these

9:29

ceasefire talks in good faith, that

9:31

they didn't agree to the full text of

9:33

the deal because they want to go through

9:35

with the Rafah invasion anyway.

9:39

And it can also be

9:41

true that there were no surprises,

9:44

but that America might be working

9:47

with Hamas through

9:49

these intermediaries, which would enrage Israel

9:51

because that would show more of

9:53

an even hand. Let's

9:57

skip towards the end here because this is where

9:59

you get the money quotes. Again,

10:03

this is from Monday. Two Israeli

10:05

officials said Israel is deeply suspicious

10:07

that the Biden administration gave guarantees

10:09

to Hamas through Egyptian and Qatari

10:12

mediators about its key demand that

10:14

a hostage deal will lead to

10:16

the end of the war. Israel

10:19

has said it will not commit to

10:21

ending the war as a part of

10:24

a hostage deal and that once the

10:26

deal is implemented it will resume the

10:28

fighting in Gaza until Hamas is defeated.

10:30

Hamas chief negotiator Khalil Ahawy told

10:33

Al Jazeera that Hamas received assurances

10:35

from the Egyptian and Qatari mediators

10:37

that President Biden is committed to

10:39

ensure that any hostage deal is

10:42

fully implemented. We think the Americans

10:44

conveyed the message to Hamas that

10:46

it will be okay when it

10:48

comes to ending the war, one

10:50

senior Israeli official said. So

10:55

that just basically shows to me that

10:57

the United States is talking

11:01

more and with

11:03

the Hamas delegation, the

11:06

Hamas representatives, and

11:08

attempting to give them assurances outside

11:10

of what Israel is saying in

11:12

the straightforward ceasefire

11:14

talks. And it's

11:16

also notable to me that Bill Burns

11:19

and the CIA are leading these negotiations

11:22

and we've said this from the beginning that

11:24

the rhetoric coming from the Defense Department, from

11:26

the CIA, and those strictly

11:29

interested in maintaining American

11:31

Empire, not ideologically Zionist,

11:33

maintaining US dominance worldwide

11:35

and specifically in the

11:38

Middle East, there has

11:40

been a different tone struck because

11:42

this is massively problematic for United

11:44

States strategic interests in the region

11:47

and legitimacy. There's only so much

11:49

we can do by brute

11:52

force and it's beginning

11:54

to turn in this way. Way

11:56

too many people have died. We know it's... Enormously

12:00

past the reported death tolls of around

12:02

35,000 that we know because there are

12:05

many many people under rubble

12:07

that are unaccounted for and We

12:10

also know that there's no reporting or infrastructure

12:12

left So thousands of people could be dying

12:14

as we speak and we just have no

12:16

idea and we know they're starving to death

12:18

But I do think that this is significant I

12:21

mean it depends on what's it gonna be significant

12:23

of is it a PR shift or is it

12:25

going to be policy? We ultimately just need to

12:27

see people dying and start being fed until

12:30

we can really judge this But

12:32

you know, I think Norm Finkelstein put it

12:34

pretty well the them I'll

12:37

shorten his his tweet

12:39

a little bit But even if this policy shift

12:41

saves only one life still that one life might

12:43

be your own It was primarily the student demonstrations

12:45

that forces change that it weigh heavily on the

12:47

conscience of every university president Contemplating the expulsion of

12:49

these students you are punishing young people who have

12:52

saved lives that but for the grace of God

12:54

might have been your so yeah,

12:56

well, I'm infinitely pessimistic

12:58

about the sincerity of

13:01

Changes like this given just the track record.

13:03

I Yeah,

13:06

I agree with that and thank

13:08

these students and you know keep pushing and

13:10

Netanyahu is panicking So he

13:13

tweeted out this video at the reason

13:15

I also that that this is relevant

13:17

was Holocaust Remembrance Day was Monday, right?

13:19

Bradley. Yeah, so he gave this speech on

13:21

Monday and this was also right When

13:25

this article was released by Axios,

13:27

so the ceasefire negotiations were happening

13:29

in this background Not Netanyahu

13:31

made these statements and then tweeted them

13:34

out just hours ago, basically reiterating

13:37

a shot across the bow

13:39

divided the angrier they are the more

13:41

righteous that Righteousness

13:43

being done. I will enjoy that you

13:45

will enjoy this I'm sure audience and I

13:47

enjoyed seeing this monster squirm very

13:50

very much 80 years ago in

13:53

the Holocaust The Jewish

13:55

people were totally defenseless Against

13:58

those who fought our discussions No

14:01

nation came to our aid. Today

14:05

we again confront enemies

14:07

bent on our destruction. I

14:10

say to the leaders of the world, no

14:13

amount of pressure, no

14:16

decision by any international forum

14:19

will stop Israel from defending itself.

14:22

As the Prime Minister of Israel, the

14:25

one and only Jewish state, I

14:28

pledge here today from Jerusalem on

14:30

this Holocaust Remembrance Day. If

14:34

Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel

14:37

will stand alone. But

14:40

we know we are not alone, because

14:42

countless decent people around the world support

14:45

our just cause. And

14:47

I say to you, we will

14:50

defeat our genocidal enemies. Never

14:53

again is done.

14:56

Damn right. Never again for anyone,

14:59

I will say. Despicable that the

15:01

lesson of the Holocaust has gone

15:03

from these people who

15:05

were victimized by ethno-nationalism to

15:08

Jewish people who were weak

15:10

because they lacked ethno-nationalism. That's,

15:12

by the way, a widespread

15:14

sentiment within Israel is that we are

15:16

the strong Jews. Well, anti-Semitic. We

15:19

wouldn't let that happen. Yeah, don't ask me. Yeah,

15:21

definitely. We wouldn't let it

15:23

happen to us. I mean, and that's exactly it.

15:26

It's like Kanye on slavery, kind

15:28

of. Oh, totally, right. And you also just...

15:31

Don't make a choice. Right. You

15:33

also see how they're

15:35

using the word genocide more often, because

15:38

this is typical Hasbara and typical

15:40

right-wing playbook in this country, too,

15:42

where you'll see them just decide

15:44

like, oh, this word is catching on. We're

15:47

going to just completely distort the meaning

15:49

of it. The

15:51

genocidal ones are the

15:53

people opposing Israel right now, according to

15:55

Benjamin Netanyahu. And

15:58

just to put a button on it, as I said... earlier,

16:00

Ben Gavere tweeted Biden

16:02

Hart Hamas. Apparently

16:05

Biden's Hamas now. Good

16:07

thing Biden spent seven months supporting

16:10

these guys. Joe, remember what happened to

16:12

Anwar al-Awlaki, you know? Yeah. Broke

16:14

that seal for a reason. These, look,

16:17

I mean, honestly, if these genocidal

16:19

maniacs were wearing Kofias or

16:23

I never know how

16:25

to say it, it's Sobe, Sobe swap.

16:28

Don't ask me. We'd

16:31

be calling them terrorists and saying they're hellbent

16:34

on the truck. They're fascists, yeah. Yeah.

16:36

So let's

16:39

hope this shift means something greater. All

16:42

right, quick break. And when we come back, we'll be with

16:44

Rachel Nolan. We

17:12

are back and we are joined now

17:14

by Rachel Nolan, historian of modern Latin

17:16

America, professor of international history at Boston

17:19

University, author of Until I Find You,

17:21

Disappeared Children and Coercive Adoptions in Guatemala.

17:23

Rachel, thanks so much for coming on

17:26

the show today. Thanks for

17:28

having me. So I

17:30

was really, I'd heard, of

17:32

course, about the disappeared children

17:34

in Guatemala and the extent

17:37

to which that occurred. I

17:40

guess that part of it was really

17:42

shocking to me in

17:44

your book how many children

17:46

were taken and kidnapped

17:48

in Guatemala. I

17:51

guess let's start at the beginning. When

17:53

did this taking

17:55

of children, financial

17:58

compensation for children, for

18:00

adoptions, beginning Guatemala, and

18:02

I guess how many

18:05

children are estimated to have

18:07

been kind of coercively taken from their families.

18:10

Great, thank you for having

18:12

me. And yeah, this is a really difficult topic and

18:15

I've always been surprised at the extent to which it's

18:17

not known in the US, especially since so many of

18:19

the children who were adopted came to the US. I

18:22

want to be very clear from

18:24

the beginning, there are many cases of

18:27

forcible adoption, illegal adoption, kidnapping from Guatemala,

18:29

but there are also many cases where

18:31

it's unknown what the circumstances are

18:33

or that were consensual. So I

18:36

want to say that before saying there were 40,000 children

18:39

adopted from Guatemala in the second

18:41

half of the 20th century. So if you ask when it started,

18:43

it was in the 1960s when the

18:46

orphanage in Guatemala City opened

18:48

an international adoption program. But

18:51

people always want to know, even after reading my

18:53

book, what percentage of these kids, what percentage of

18:55

the 40,000 were stolen, kidnapped, and because so much

18:57

of the paperwork was falsified, we actually don't know

19:00

that. I've been studying this for 10 years and

19:02

I don't have a straight answer. And

19:06

when did this, there were two

19:08

waves of adoptions you write about,

19:10

when did the first wave take

19:12

place and what was the political

19:14

situation that led to this really

19:16

sick system? So

19:18

there were, as you say, there were

19:20

two waves of adoption from Guatemala. The

19:24

first thing that I'm sure you're discussing is to

19:26

do with the 1980s genocide, which again, I'm surprised

19:28

is not better known in the United States. There

19:30

was a civil war in Guatemala from 1960 to

19:32

1996, a 36 year civil

19:36

war. 200,000 people were killed, 200,000 people. It's the

19:38

bloodiest conflict

19:40

in the 20th century in the

19:42

Americas. And

19:44

it was considered, courts

19:47

in Guatemala found that genocidal acts had been committed in

19:49

the 1980s against certain

19:52

indigenous groups. So half of the

19:54

population in Guatemala is indigenous,

19:56

speaks one of 22 Mayan languages. They

19:58

were targeted during the Civil War because

20:00

the military dictatorships which were backed

20:03

by the United States thought that they were

20:05

particularly susceptible to communism or particularly susceptible to

20:07

armed struggle which in many cases was not

20:09

true. So that's relatively well known. If people

20:11

know about Guatemala they may know about the

20:13

Civil War, they may know about the 200,000

20:16

people who are killed, they

20:18

may know about indigenous people

20:21

who were targeted. What they tend not to know is

20:23

the history of adoption that was part of that war.

20:25

So 45,000 people were forcibly

20:27

disappeared during the war of

20:30

that group, 5,000 more children and Truth

20:33

Commission reports in Guatemala along

20:35

with my own research have found that at

20:37

least 500 of those kids were put

20:39

up for international adoption. So those are kids

20:41

who are forcibly separated from their families, their

20:44

details were falsified

20:46

and they were put up with families in

20:48

Europe or in the US under false pretenses

20:50

essentially and in many cases the adoptive families

20:52

had no idea about the provenance

20:54

of those children. So that's one system that

20:57

a very painful history that occurred during the

20:59

Civil War in Guatemala mostly in the 1980s

21:01

and the second wave

21:03

that I think you're referring to is this

21:05

for-profit adoption system that grew up after

21:08

the end of the Civil War.

21:10

Adoptions were partially privatized starting as early as

21:12

1977 but Guatemalan lawyers found that

21:16

they could work directly with clients in the

21:19

United States not have judicial oversight for their

21:21

adoptions and so in this privatized system they

21:23

were charging up to 40,000 US

21:25

dollars per adoption. It's an enormous amount

21:27

of money in Guatemala and so what you ended up

21:30

creating in Guatemala was

21:33

incentives for trafficking children, incentives

21:35

even for kidnapping in certain

21:37

cases for children

21:39

who ended up in homes mostly in the US in

21:41

that instance. So the first wave many

21:44

of those children ended up in Canada or Europe or

21:46

the US and the second wave most of the Guatemalan

21:48

adoptees ended up in the US. And

21:51

we obviously know about the United States'

21:54

involvement in the 1954 coup? Is it

21:56

54? who

22:00

in basically overthrowing a

22:03

left-wing government as the US did

22:05

throughout Latin America, what was their

22:07

role, if any? I

22:10

mean, it doesn't even need to be

22:12

governmental, but what was America's role in

22:14

some of these adoptive systems? Well,

22:19

it would demand for children from the

22:21

global south. So after

22:23

Roe v. Wade in the United States, there

22:26

were fewer children who were

22:28

available through the domestic adoption

22:30

system. So you saw domestic,

22:32

what had previously been families looking to

22:34

domestic adoption turning abroad. And in some

22:36

cases, that was not bad, right? There

22:39

were needy children and orphanages abroad. And

22:41

then in other cases, the adoption market,

22:43

especially once it became commercialized in the

22:45

1980s and 1990s, hooked into some

22:47

of these earlier patterns of destructive behavior

22:50

of the United States in places like

22:52

Latin America or Southeast Asia. So it's

22:54

really frustrating to read the file, I

22:56

mean, devastating really, to read the adoption

22:58

files talking about what is vanished would

23:01

be disintegrated families, women who couldn't care

23:03

for children, women who had no income. And

23:05

these are even in cases that were not

23:07

trafficked children or not the children who were

23:10

put up for adoption through war crimes, but just

23:12

normal adoption cases from the 80s and

23:14

90s. And you read about disintegrated families and

23:16

think, wait a second, I know

23:19

the village that they're talking about. That was

23:21

a village that was targeted in US-supported tax

23:23

by the military government. What caused

23:25

those families to disintegrate? No. And

23:28

so many scholars and activists

23:30

in Guatemala would point to 1954

23:33

as the kind of original sin

23:35

moment in Central American history, the

23:37

moment that the CIA overthrew a

23:39

democratically elected government in Guatemala. And

23:44

that was really devastating and helped push

23:46

the country into this horrendous civil war.

23:49

You talk about how the children

23:52

that were taken and put up

23:54

for adoption were mainly homeless.

23:56

How did the the

24:00

right-wing governments that followed

24:03

the coup in 1954 kind of treat

24:05

indigenous people. You

24:12

mentioned the genocide, of course, but how did

24:14

that wave of

24:16

violence towards indigenous people kind of

24:19

begin and fit with

24:22

this stolen children saga? It's

24:26

a great question. I mean, there are a lot

24:28

of different ways of reading the history of forcible

24:30

adoptions. When you're studying Guatemala, you

24:32

have two patterns that come through really strongly. One

24:34

is familiar from Argentina, right? Some people may be

24:36

listening to this and think, you know, disappear children

24:39

during a dirty war. Isn't

24:41

that the history of Argentina, Chile in

24:43

the 20th century, also Nazi Germany had

24:46

a famous adoption program, Francoist Spain, they

24:48

would be absolutely right, right? Part of

24:50

this is the response of a totalitarian

24:52

government to an armed insurgency. You take

24:55

away children from families who are thought to

24:57

be supportive of the insurgency and you place them

24:59

with so-called loyal or safe families. So that's one

25:01

pattern you could read here. The other

25:03

pattern is much older and has to do

25:05

with anti-indigenous violence around the world. So

25:08

someone else might be listening to this history and thinking, you know,

25:10

wait a second, taking indiginous... Sounds like

25:12

America or Canada, right? I mean,

25:14

that's what we did to our indigenous populations,

25:17

right? Exactly. After the closure of

25:19

boarding schools throughout the United States and

25:21

Canada that had stolen effectively

25:24

Native American children and First

25:26

Nations children and placed them forcibly in

25:28

these kind of white Christian environments, after

25:30

the closure of those boarding schools, you

25:32

saw enormous rates of foster and adoptions

25:34

of Native children in the US and

25:36

Canada. And you know, we might mention

25:38

Australia or many other contexts as well.

25:42

And in fact, some of the legislation

25:44

in the 1970s in

25:47

the US protecting Native children from out

25:49

adoption to white families was a direct

25:51

response from Native American groups who

25:54

were activists against the theft of indigenous children.

25:56

So someone, a kind of activist might be

25:58

listening to this history. and thinking, wait,

26:00

this is not the totalitarian pattern, it's

26:02

the anti-Indigenous violence pattern. And the horrific

26:05

thing about Guatemalan history in the 1980s is

26:07

it was the overlay of both patterns. It

26:10

was both Cold War era violence and

26:12

anti-Indigenous violence, which is this kind of

26:14

longer, broader wave. So the

26:16

Guatemalan government at the time, which was

26:18

led by non-Indigenous Guatemalans who are called

26:21

Ladinos in that country, was kind

26:23

of drawing on both of

26:25

those patterns of violence, playing into both. And

26:28

the fact that Guatemala

26:30

was the only country in the world

26:33

to allow fully privatized adoptions, I

26:36

mean, a lot of this sounds

26:38

like Naomi Klein's shock doctrine

26:40

too, right? Where there's this

26:42

vacuum left by the coup and

26:44

the violence and

26:48

there are private interests that

26:50

come in and capitalize on this,

26:53

including private adoption agencies. What

26:55

were some of those agencies? Were

26:57

they religiously affiliated? And how did

26:59

Guatemala allow for a system of

27:02

full private adoption? It's

27:05

a great comparison to Naomi Klein's work.

27:07

And I think people

27:09

sometimes underestimate the extent to which these civil

27:11

conflicts are what in Spanish you would call

27:13

una piñata, like a way for different people

27:15

to get money, you shake piñata

27:17

and the money comes out. So there were land

27:20

grabs in Guatemala. There were oil grabs

27:22

of oil areas that belong to indigenous

27:24

people. A lot of people made money

27:26

during the Guatemalan civil war. elite Guatemalans,

27:29

non-indigenous people, foreigners, and foreign

27:31

adoption agencies were just kind of one group

27:33

that was getting in on that

27:35

action to put it in the crudest possible

27:37

terms. With the twist that

27:39

many of them really believed that they

27:41

were doing something humanitarian. So there were

27:43

some cynical actors. There's a lawyer named

27:46

Susana Luarca who's currently in prison in

27:48

Guatemala city where I interviewed her and

27:50

she's in prison for the crime of trafficking children

27:53

for adoptions. Okay, so there were people who

27:55

were cynically just making money from

27:57

this. But what's so different

27:59

about. the case of adoptions is

28:01

that in the US, it's

28:03

understood as charitable, right? It's understood as

28:06

a good thing. And now I

28:08

think that's changed somewhat with the

28:10

news coming out, not just from Guatemala, but

28:13

some of the evangelical groups that were taking

28:15

children out of Haiti after the devastating earthquake

28:17

there without proper paperwork, who said that they

28:19

were doing charitable work, but they were effectively

28:22

kidnapping children. So I think people in the

28:24

US are getting more aware of the meaningful

28:26

criticisms of adoptions, but Guatemala

28:28

was an early case of privatization. As

28:30

you say, there was no oversight for the

28:33

private system. And some of the lawyers were

28:35

acting in good faith and doing good paperwork.

28:37

I've seen some notarial documents that were very

28:39

well done and others where

28:41

they're making money. And it was really a mix.

28:44

So just to answer your question fully, there

28:47

were evangelical Christian, Pentecostal Christian groups involved in

28:49

adoptions to the United States. There were Catholic

28:51

groups involved in adoptions to the United States,

28:53

and there were secular groups involved. It was

28:55

kind of everyone. Yeah, I

28:57

mean, it really just also intersects with

28:59

notions of white saviorism as well,

29:02

right? Where they

29:04

have stated well-meaning, but there's probably

29:06

very little consideration

29:08

for say, the birth parents and

29:11

the birth mother. Your

29:13

book talks about some heartbreaking examples

29:15

of what people went through. If

29:17

you don't mind sharing one or two that

29:20

you'd like our audience to know about. Sure,

29:23

I think I am not part of

29:25

what's called the adoption triad. The

29:28

adoptive parents, the birth mother and the adoptee. But

29:31

for people who are, it's really striking

29:33

that the narratives about adoption have been

29:35

dominated by adoptive parents until in recent

29:38

years, we've started to hear more from

29:40

adoptees. People who were adopted writing memoirs,

29:42

making documentary films, giving their

29:44

sides and their perspective of what happened with

29:46

adoption. The group we never hear from are

29:49

birth parents because it's very difficult. People

29:52

want privacy. I did not interview birth

29:54

mothers for this project because I didn't think

29:56

it would be ethical. However, because I read

29:58

so many adoption files for this project. project,

30:00

you do get the point of view of the

30:03

birth mothers, however mediated it is through the social

30:05

workers who are writing down what they said or

30:07

kind of miscommunications because many birth mothers spoke

30:09

one of 22 Mayan languages, perhaps their Spanish wasn't

30:11

so great, and all of these documents were in

30:14

Spanish. But even through that kind of

30:16

screen where you don't quite know if what you're

30:18

reading is accurate, you can discern, the reader of

30:20

an adoption file can discern a lot of distress

30:22

on the part of a lot of these birth

30:24

mothers. And it was very difficult to read. So

30:26

just to give one example, there was a case

30:28

of a woman who was making under one

30:30

US dollar a day, sailing for Tia's

30:33

in a square in downtown Guatemala City,

30:35

and she was approached by what's called

30:37

a ha'la dora, so women who were

30:39

working with private lawyers to

30:42

try to find children who might be adoptable.

30:44

Because once there was a for-profit market for

30:46

children, it wasn't enough to just be in

30:48

touch with orphanages and see who really needed

30:50

a home, but rather to find children, especially

30:53

very young children, which was the preference in

30:55

North America, who might be adoptable. So anyway,

30:57

this birth mother was pregnant and was approached

30:59

in a marketplace by a ha'la dora,

31:01

saying, could you really afford to raise that child?

31:05

And the court

31:07

records that I found about this case show that

31:09

she was very conflicted, very tormented about this. Of

31:11

course, she didn't have enough money to raise her

31:14

child the way that she wanted to. So

31:16

eventually she relinquished the child. But

31:18

that kind of story or that kind of case really

31:21

shows how incomplete the

31:23

idea of consent might be, because this

31:26

woman gave legal consent for the adoption.

31:28

So that is a legal adoption. However,

31:32

what were the circumstances in which she was living?

31:34

What were the historical reasons she was living under

31:36

the circumstances? That needs to be taken into account,

31:38

too. Lastly, how

31:41

do you see this as connected

31:43

with, say, family separation policies by

31:45

the Trump administration and other kind

31:48

of draconian immigration border

31:50

policies by the United

31:52

States? Is there any continuation of that, or

31:54

was that just separate abject

31:57

cruelty? It's

31:59

not separate. there is it a perfect continuation.

32:02

I started working on this book living in Guatemala

32:04

City in 2014,

32:06

when the so called unaccompanied minor crisis

32:08

was really beginning. And so the

32:10

parallels were very much in my mind the

32:13

entire time that I was doing this research. And

32:15

I was shocked to find that Laura Ingraham,

32:17

the Fox News host who

32:19

is herself the mother of an

32:21

adopted adopted child from Guatemala, said

32:24

during the family separation crisis under Trump, that

32:26

Americans were not putting our hearts out

32:28

there for children in the right way.

32:30

That was the quote. And what she

32:32

meant by that was children should be

32:34

separated and then put up for adoption with US

32:37

families. And the Associated Press

32:39

has also found in extensive

32:41

reporting that some children of

32:43

parents who are

32:45

deported have gone into the US foster

32:47

system and have even been put up

32:49

for adoption without the parents consent. So

32:52

these are ongoing stories. It's

32:54

just important to note that family

32:57

separation didn't end under Trump. And

32:59

many migrants in the US experience

33:01

ongoing massive levels of deportation,

33:04

including under Biden, as effective family separation.

33:06

Because if you're just supporting a parent

33:08

and not a child, what happens

33:10

then? Well, then they're

33:12

working in a slaughterhouse. And I mean,

33:16

that's a whole different avenue

33:18

we could go down. But yeah, as

33:20

I want to give the flowers to Hannah

33:22

Dreyer for her recently Pulitzer Prize winning reporting

33:24

on this, she's done excellent reporting on Central

33:27

American children who are working on terrible conditions in the

33:29

US. And this will be a

33:31

story, of course, we're monitoring here on the show,

33:33

as we have been throughout.

33:36

Rachel Nolan, the book is called Until I

33:38

Find You Disappeared Children and Coercive Adoptions in

33:40

Guatemala. Thank you so much for your time

33:42

today. We'll put a link to your book

33:44

in the description wherever people are listening to

33:46

or watching this. Thanks so much. Thank

33:49

you for having me. All right, guys,

33:51

quick break, and then we will be joined

33:53

by our second guest, Raga

33:56

Makawi to talk about Sudan. We

34:49

are back and we are joined

34:51

now once again by Raga Makawi,

34:53

Sudanese editor, researcher, editor of the

34:55

Pan-African platform African Arguments. Raga, thanks

34:57

so much for coming back on

34:59

the show. Thank

35:01

you for having me. So

35:03

it's been over, just

35:05

over one year since this

35:07

war in, this bloody war in Sudan

35:09

erupted. Can you give our audience a

35:12

quick overview of what

35:14

the current status is and what

35:16

the sides are here

35:18

in this latest conflict? Sure.

35:22

So Sudan's conflict, Sudan's

35:24

war remains a widespread

35:26

phenomenon that's affected every

35:28

aspect of Sudanese life.

35:32

The actual fighting spreads across

35:34

the country even though it's

35:36

disapprop- and disappropriately kind of

35:38

focused more intense in some

35:40

areas more than others. More

35:43

recently the conflict has taken

35:45

on an ethnic kind of dimension,

35:47

especially with its

35:49

epic center recently developing in Darfur.

35:52

I mean you've had the whole kind of

35:54

ethnic cleansing of the Masali groups, the

35:57

Black tribes in Sudan. in

36:00

West as was Darfur back

36:02

in July as the RSF

36:05

pushed them into Chad

36:08

and murdered hundreds, if

36:10

not more. Now you've

36:13

got kind of a repeat of that situation

36:15

where it's a standoff in

36:17

Darfur's capital where you've got

36:19

the RSF, a standoff between the RSF

36:21

and SAF with the kind

36:23

of with the presence of

36:25

multiple rebel groups whose

36:29

base has always been the capital of

36:31

Darfur. So you've got the situation where

36:34

the conflict has drawn in rebel

36:37

fighters of different ethnic groups, armed

36:39

actors of ethnic backgrounds and

36:42

they're all kind of in a standoff now in

36:44

Farsher. The

36:47

problem is Farsher itself has been a

36:49

haven that received multiple

36:51

displaced population from around Darfur and

36:53

other areas but

36:55

at the moment the

36:58

probability of its implosion into

37:01

a war

37:03

zone that affects millions of already

37:05

displaced is quite acute. The

37:08

ethnic element of that is also quite permanent.

37:12

If you have a situation where different

37:14

rebel groups have different ethnic backgrounds who

37:16

have been in conflict

37:19

over the past 20 years since the Darfur war first

37:21

erupted in 2004, if

37:24

you have them again clashing over

37:26

kind of you know a political

37:28

agenda turned ethnic then that's a

37:30

catastrophe in the making. I

37:33

think it's also important to kind

37:35

of consider what the violence,

37:37

the shape the violence has taken on over

37:39

a year as you said Emma,

37:41

it had social and

37:45

economic implications. More

37:48

than 30 million people in

37:51

Sudan are now food insecure. You've

37:53

got a famine that's looming, it's not declared

37:56

but its possible effects

37:58

are felt. So

38:01

the fact that this is a countrywide

38:03

conflict with no safe havens means

38:05

that people's livelihoods, the existing kind

38:08

of economic change, the

38:10

chains and the markets that have existed,

38:14

have all been disrupted, destroyed. People

38:16

have no access to food. Obviously,

38:20

not to mention the kind of directed

38:22

violence of the population. Any

38:26

problematic stories emerging

38:28

of the directed and targeted violence,

38:30

the targeting of public, the

38:32

unarmed public using anything

38:36

from rape as a weapon of war

38:39

to kind of extrajudicial killings. All

38:42

of this has also kind of necessitated

38:44

a reaction on the on the part

38:47

of the public. More

38:49

and more kind of civilian Sudanese are

38:51

taking up arms to protect

38:53

themselves, to protect their families. So now

38:55

you've got a situation where more and

38:57

more people are kind of being drawn

38:59

into the fold of the conflict, which,

39:02

you know, warrants of the

39:04

probability of this turning into into a

39:06

civil war. And

39:09

you mentioned the RSF. Hemedi

39:11

is the leader of the

39:13

RSF. Can you give

39:15

us some background on what the RSF

39:17

is? And

39:20

it's basically the

39:22

fact that it's butted heads with traditional armed

39:24

forces in Sudan. Right.

39:27

So the RSF is a

39:29

paramilitary or kind of militia

39:31

group that was created by

39:33

the Sudanese government, particularly

39:36

under the tenor of the Islamists

39:38

under Bashir's regime, in order to be able to

39:43

control the periphery. So

39:46

their formula to kind of ensuring

39:49

their control over places

39:51

like Darfur and Kudufan that had

39:53

a presence of rebel movements was

39:56

to kind of arm ethnic groups, ethnic

39:58

tribes. them

40:00

fight the fight on behalf of the

40:02

state. So it was, as I

40:04

explained previously, it was a

40:08

counterinsurgency on the cheap tactics, so kind

40:10

of exports armed

40:14

contracts or exports violence

40:16

contracts out to ethnic

40:18

groups to

40:21

be able to do what the state did not manage to

40:23

do for the last

40:25

30-40 years. Now, Hehmeti

40:28

himself has grown and

40:30

he's become quite a prominent kind of armed

40:33

actor in first in Darfur

40:35

and then his weight, the

40:38

magnitude of his both political and

40:45

armed weight has increased with time. Mostly

40:48

because of developments that have to do

40:50

with Sudan in itself. I mean

40:52

Sudan has gone through a revolution when the revolution

40:54

erupted in Khartoum in the

40:56

capital in 2018. The

40:59

the shear and

41:01

his regime had to then rely on

41:03

the RSF on Hehmeti

41:05

to also quell political

41:08

unrest in the in the center. So

41:10

they brought them over, they expanded their

41:17

mandates, they constitutionally legitimized

41:19

them through a

41:22

decree and some legal provisions.

41:24

That's on one side, on the other

41:26

side, the

41:29

political, economic and war

41:31

violence turmoil that

41:35

the Horn in general and beyond is

41:38

dealing with necessitates

41:41

armed actors who are

41:43

mercenaries who can

41:45

be paid off. So you've had regional

41:48

actors, particularly the UAE,

41:50

pay for these services in a kind of

41:53

a gun for hire kind of

41:55

model. So

42:00

all this money coming from the legitimacy,

42:03

legal and political legitimacy from the inside, financial

42:07

clout from the outside has given

42:10

grounds and unprecedented growth to

42:12

the concept of militias in

42:15

Sudan as not seen elsewhere. And

42:18

is that why I've seen reporting that

42:20

Iran is also giving funds and to the

42:22

other side? Is that a part of

42:24

this as well? Well,

42:27

I mean, not directly, but again, this is a

42:29

kind of a wider dynamic of

42:31

how the Sudanese state

42:34

is trying to kind of legitimate

42:36

itself and balance out its

42:39

ability to kind of take back monopoly

42:41

over violence. Iran

42:44

is a long term kind of ally of

42:47

the Sudanese state, despite

42:52

kind of, you know, a break in relations in the

42:54

last 10 or 15 years. So

42:57

it's part of a kind of an extended network

42:59

of allyship that the Sudanese state

43:02

kind of reverts to when it

43:04

needs. And you see it, you

43:06

see it with countries

43:08

like Turkey,

43:12

for example, it's not just Iran. But

43:16

the Sudanese state is in desperate need. I

43:18

mean, the South Sudanese army is in desperate need

43:20

of weapons, financial support.

43:23

And it will turn to whomever will provide

43:25

this force. Because I read

43:28

some of your writing essentially saying that

43:30

the RSF had a lot of made

43:33

a lot of gains and early

43:35

on, and that stalled a bit. But

43:37

I want to, you

43:40

know, I want to get to that in a second,

43:42

the reality on the ground, as you'd been alluding to

43:44

before. But you mentioned the 2018-2019 revolution. And

43:48

there was a glimmer of hope and

43:50

a beginning of potentially a new future

43:52

for Sudan. What happened

43:54

there? How did that break down? And then

43:57

how did the RSF you mentioned

43:59

how they grew? in power because the

44:01

state deployed them to quell down this

44:03

uprising. But

44:06

how does that, the history of

44:08

the populist movement of people rising

44:11

up against the government fit into this? I

44:15

think it's for asking about the revolution. I think

44:17

it's an important and usually overlooked

44:20

aspect of the political dynamic

44:22

of in Sudan, though it's

44:24

a central, it's got quite

44:26

an impact and it's a

44:28

central feature of it. I

44:30

think that the way that Bashir was ousted,

44:32

the kind of conditions of

44:36

the kind of saw his

44:39

being deposed were

44:41

ones that were internally manufactured. So

44:44

it was more or less a palace coup. And

44:49

even though Bashir left his political

44:52

security establishment remained

44:54

intact. And

44:56

we saw that in the aftermath. So

44:59

basically the process that developed in

45:01

the aftermath of Bashir being

45:03

ousted was quite problematic. And

45:06

this is why

45:08

the Sudanese popular movement

45:12

never went back home. They continue to protest

45:14

on the street because they

45:16

realize that this new

45:18

introduced formula that was unfortunately

45:20

backed by Western powers

45:22

was not going

45:25

to deliver them towards a transition

45:27

into a democracy. The

45:31

main players on the stage or

45:34

that had inherited Bashir's military

45:38

security system were

45:41

none other than Chamecit, together

45:43

with the Sudanese

45:46

armed forces. And yes,

45:48

eventually they did kind of bring

45:50

in some civilian actors, but

45:53

their presence, their role, their

45:55

weight in kind of

45:58

shifting the political dynamics. was

46:00

very minimal and the

46:04

consequences seen in the, you know,

46:06

in what happened after

46:08

that. A

46:10

coup to only two years after

46:12

Bashi was ousted, followed by

46:15

a country-wide war.

46:19

And that coup basically gave

46:21

rise to the two actors

46:23

that we're seeing here who

46:25

are responsible for the violence,

46:27

Hometi and Berhan. Can

46:30

you speak about his forces as like

46:32

the, guess,

46:34

the skeleton of the

46:36

Sudanese army and what that means

46:38

kind of going

46:40

forward? As

46:45

I mentioned before, the Sudanese

46:47

army itself was weakened over

46:49

the decades since independence, since

46:52

post-independence. The Sudanese army,

46:54

even though it's a central actor

46:57

and economic agent of Sudanese politics,

46:59

it's been weakened by neoliberal politics,

47:01

you know, by by

47:04

austerity, by American sanctions. And

47:07

so the Sudanese state devised

47:10

this measure of

47:14

developing an arming agents

47:19

or actors on its behalf in

47:22

the area that can't reach most. And

47:25

Sudan's formula, like most post-colonial countries

47:27

or African countries, is where

47:29

the periphery or the rural areas

47:31

usually kind of feed the center.

47:34

So the center depends on its, you know,

47:37

kind of continuance on the periphery. So that's where you've

47:39

got the land, that's where you've got the livestock, that's

47:41

where you've got cheap labor. In

47:44

order to control all of that and to ensure

47:46

that a revolution doesn't

47:49

erupt from the periphery,

47:51

the Sudanese state devised a

47:53

mechanism or a governance model

47:56

by which it rules through

47:59

kind of comprehensive. conflict, security and

48:02

war through a proxy. Now,

48:08

eventually, the role

48:11

of these armed actors kind of

48:13

developed beyond kind of meting out

48:15

violence to also managing to become

48:18

a proxy

48:20

bureaucratic arm of the state. Members

48:23

of the RSL for groups of the RSL

48:25

were kind of involved directly in

48:28

the managing of Sudan's productive sectors,

48:31

whether it was in the

48:33

mechanized Jazira scheme, which is

48:37

the near periphery, just outside

48:39

of Khartoum. They were also in charge

48:42

of controlling land

48:44

and governing mining sites. They

48:47

oversaw the process of extracting gold,

48:49

its movement to Khartoum, so it can

48:51

be exported to the Gulf after that. They

48:54

also oversaw the process of securing

48:58

livestock roots, which is Sudan's,

49:01

by far Sudan's largest export

49:04

commodity. So

49:06

again, the vitality of armed actors,

49:09

of paramilitary armed actors in Sudan is

49:11

not just about violence, but

49:14

it kind of tells the story of the intertwinements

49:16

of both economic

49:18

production or money and

49:21

violence, the necessity of

49:24

violence and armed actors for economic

49:26

extraction, which the state needs to

49:29

maintain itself. We put

49:31

up this map here just so people can

49:33

visualize because I think sometimes it's hard to

49:35

get a full sense of the geography here.

49:38

You see Darfur at the bottom, and

49:40

that's the north. Khartoum

49:47

is there in the center, as has been referenced

49:49

here. Last question, Raga, before I

49:51

know we have to let you go. What

49:54

do you think that the Western audiences

49:56

are missing, and the Western press,

49:58

I know they miss a ton. if they

50:00

don't give the context of, say, the 2018 or 2019 revolution

50:02

and how people are trying

50:06

to take back their

50:08

government and put something

50:10

more equitable in place. But what

50:12

would you say to our, you

50:14

know, English-speaking audience that they should

50:16

keep in mind when analyzing the

50:18

horror that's happening in Sudan? I

50:22

mean, for starters, I think the way that Sudan is

50:24

referred to, or the war that the Chinese

50:27

war being referred to as the

50:29

forgotten war is somewhat of

50:32

a problematic kind of reference,

50:35

mostly because it kind of suggests that, first

50:38

of all, it overlooks the fact that it

50:40

is not normal in

50:42

this day and time for a war at

50:44

this level and this magnitude to erupt and

50:48

also maintain its intensity over

50:50

here. I

50:52

think people, especially in the

50:55

West, asking the question, what

50:57

is the war in Sudan? Yes, there's a war,

50:59

but what is this war? What

51:02

does it look like? What are the

51:04

driving forces behind it? How

51:06

they managed to maintain its

51:08

intensity for this

51:10

long is

51:12

as equal as remembering that there

51:15

is a war in Sudan that

51:17

requires humanitarian assistance. I

51:21

think that the

51:24

West, particularly America,

51:27

they could do more to intervene

51:29

at a geopolitical level to

51:32

stem the problematic

51:34

interventions of regional

51:37

countries who are influencing and driving

51:39

this war either through funding, you

51:42

know, funding of

51:45

militias or political meddling. I

51:48

think that countries

51:51

in and within themselves, communities, do

51:54

have the ability to

51:56

reconcile, to stem the violence, to

51:58

kind of start. kick

52:00

off or kick start a process

52:03

of peace and then post-war reconstruction.

52:06

And what's stopping is, is these

52:08

kind of meddling and interventionist activities coming

52:10

in from rogue and

52:13

problematic agents or countries

52:15

in the region. I

52:17

think the West should play a more active role in

52:20

stemming these negative

52:23

or problematic politics. All

52:26

right. Well, Raga Makawi, Sudanese editor,

52:28

researcher editor of the

52:30

website and Pan-African platform magazine, African Arguments. Thanks

52:33

so much for your time today. Really appreciate

52:35

it. Thank you,

52:37

Emma. Thank you for having me. Bye now. Of

52:40

course. Bye. All right.

52:43

We are going to wrap up the free part

52:45

of this program and head into the fun

52:48

half where

52:52

we will take your calls and

52:54

read your IMs. The

52:56

number is 646-257-3920. Matt,

53:01

what's happening on Left Reckoning? Well, first I'd like

53:03

to say good job on those two tight interviews.

53:05

Thank you. I had to get them out quick

53:07

because they had hard outs. And

53:10

just master broadcasted there. Thank you. The first,

53:13

I do want to comment on the first

53:15

interview about the adoption thing. There's a guy

53:17

named Gary Clayton Anderson who is sort of

53:20

main historian about the Dakota War

53:22

or genocide of

53:24

the Dakotas. I use

53:27

that word because he doesn't. He

53:29

denies that term is applicable. He'll

53:31

fall back on something like ethnic

53:33

cleansing. He'll admit that the Minnesotans

53:36

were genocidal in their rhetoric but

53:38

not maybe in action. And

53:40

that's interesting for

53:42

him to say because this is

53:45

from a book by Rick Liebeck

53:47

on pedagogy about the genocide

53:49

of the natives that we're just

53:51

really not taught about. But the

53:54

account of his youth in Minnesota about Gary Clayton Anderson,

53:56

this historian who basically owns the subject but won't use

53:58

the subject. were genocide, was not

54:01

merely one of football games and reading about the

54:03

war, nor did Anderson try it. Maybe

54:05

I'll put myself up here. Nor, Bradley,

54:08

if you could get the, I'm

54:10

not sure if I

54:12

can, anyway, being

54:14

careful to note his family's Norwegian Lutheran

54:16

background, he told of traveling with his

54:18

mother to Indian reservations in North Dakota

54:20

when she worked for the Catholic Family

54:23

Service, bringing indigenous children back to Fargo

54:26

for medical examination and preparation for their

54:28

adoption to families in the Baltimore, Maryland

54:30

area. And I would ride along with

54:32

her to see the priest of

54:34

Standing Rock or whatever, and we would go pick

54:37

up a baby in some isolated part of the

54:39

reservation. She just wanted someone

54:41

along to shovel snow if she got

54:43

stuck. And I would hold the baby,

54:46

and we would race back to Fargo

54:48

to the clinic and have that baby

54:50

examined. And Liebeck writes, the topic of

54:52

genocide then, the definition of which includes

54:55

the criterion forcibly transferring children of the

54:57

group to another group established in

55:00

the 1848 U.S. Genocide Convention. Anyway,

55:03

I read that guy's book thinking

55:05

I was getting the real dope

55:07

on what happened in Minnesota, and it

55:09

turns out that he's a genocide denier. And

55:11

so maybe this actually explains why

55:14

I'm fairly, again,

55:17

open to pretty broad definitions

55:19

of genocide and not really

55:21

here for people being

55:23

pedantic about it in the

55:25

sense that we face one actually now. And

55:28

it includes things like the way that the

55:31

Gaza population has been split off from the

55:33

West Bank population as much as it includes

55:36

this thing which is like moving

55:38

from a genocide to a Holocaust now

55:40

with these bombings and starvation.

55:42

So I just, yeah, it was a good

55:44

interview, and that's an important thing to underline.

55:47

And left reckoning, we

55:49

had Gaza, we talked about basketball, we

55:52

talked about the Timberwolves. Well, I mean, come

55:54

on, you've got to dedicate some time to

55:56

that, Matt, because it's a very exciting time

55:58

to be a Minnesota fan. And I like what

56:00

they did in the draft for the NFL. I know you care

56:02

less about that, but I think they're gonna be kinda

56:05

good. They've got- I'm just happy Kirk Cousins is

56:07

out there, because I'm not happy. Like when we

56:09

had like Justin Jefferson, I'm like, oh man, we've

56:11

got Justin Jefferson, like who's throwing in the ball

56:13

the whole time? Well, look, I mean, J.J.

56:15

McCarthy is not gonna be like Caleb Williams

56:17

or set your hair on fire by the,

56:19

you know, his, I would say

56:21

the way he looks physically, but he's 21 years

56:23

old, he's a really good athlete, and he has

56:25

a deceptively strong arm. And I think like most

56:27

quarterbacks are gonna be good in that system. So

56:29

I don't know, I think Minnesota,

56:32

watch out for them. But

56:34

anyway, on ESPN, we spoke about such

56:36

topics, really the NBA, NHL playoffs. We also

56:38

gave our thoughts on the Kendrick and Drake

56:40

beef. You can

56:42

check that out, youtube.com/ESPN show.

56:45

Yeah, this morning I did a running

56:47

workout class at my gym, and the

56:49

guy there was a Drake stan. And

56:52

I already like didn't like him because he was

56:54

giving me a little crap, because I, he

56:57

wanted to, whatever. He wanted to even out the,

56:59

yeah, you split like your time on the treadmill

57:01

and then doing the weights. And I like to

57:03

start on the treadmill. And he was like, we

57:05

don't have even numbers. I'm like, I got here

57:08

early so I could be on the treadmill. Don't

57:10

make me move. And then he played the whole

57:12

time it was Drake music. And I was like,

57:14

okay, we don't get along. I think it's the

57:16

reality of the situation. Anyway, I hope

57:20

he's not listening. The number

57:22

is- With your whole squad, your support crew. Oh yes,

57:25

totally. Oh wait, we have Binder. Okay, great. Hey

57:27

Binder. How are you? I'm

57:29

good, but I don't know. I

57:31

hate that noise. That is a very strange

57:34

microphone thing happening. I think it's Brandon. Oh,

57:37

oh. There we go. I can't see him. Oh

57:43

yeah, it's very sunny over there by here. Yeah,

57:45

whoa. Usually, usually you're in the

57:47

dark. Now it's like, you had it,

57:50

you put your face out the window, beautiful morning.

57:53

It's a little, the birds. Yeah, that's the first

57:55

time it's been sunny. There,

57:57

since he's moved. Well,

58:01

in the darkness is the light and all of that. Are

58:04

you gonna be okay for the show? Are

58:06

you gonna be able to fix that in the break? Yes,

58:09

yes. I'm gonna fix it in

58:11

the break for sure. Okay, okay. Or I'll have

58:13

a very nice tan. Yeah.

58:15

A nicer tan. Right. It's

58:18

like that, what's that old riddle? It's like why are

58:20

you always tan on the left side of your body

58:22

and not the other? What daily activity do you do?

58:24

And I guess I don't do it anymore, but

58:26

it's driving. It's not a riddle. If you

58:28

look at truckers, the fin. That's true. That's

58:30

definitely not a riddle. I just think it's

58:32

just a thing. Search truckers one-sided

58:36

skin sort of tan and over a

58:38

lifetime of trucking, it's crazy. You

58:40

know. Yeah. I

58:42

just assumed the answer was jerking off and

58:44

so I just tried to work on a

58:46

post hoc explanation for why that would be.

58:48

I just thought that was the answer to

58:51

a joke. Right, well okay, because one

58:53

muscle is better than the other. It's that

58:55

meme of Quagmire. Anyway. You

58:58

should leave it like that during the

59:00

show. It looks like I'm radiating down

59:02

upon you. Yeah. I'm right. I'm

59:04

not your show. I'm going for a wrong side.

59:06

I'm going to bite the end of the lump.

59:10

I want to be the light. Binder,

59:13

what's happening on your shows? Just

59:16

go to youtube.com/Matt Binder and just

59:18

watch whatever we call. It's

59:21

been, it's been, it's

59:23

been. We

59:25

do it. We're doing the shows. It's just that

59:27

the topics are, you know, it's been all over

59:30

the place with everything going on and a lot

59:32

of call-ins, a lot of discussions. We

59:34

had a, last night I had a caller

59:36

call in to explain to me for what

59:40

the Drake and Kendrick Lamar beef

59:42

for 30 minutes. It's

59:45

been all over the place. So you got the abridged

59:47

version? Yes, there you

59:49

go. Right. So youtube.com/Matt Binder.

59:52

Subscribe to the channel. Great

59:55

haircut, Binder, looking sharp as

59:57

hell. I appreciate it. I do

59:59

this once every. You know four months just to

1:00:01

refresh everything with the full-blown intention of it

1:00:03

all coming back. So don't get the used

1:00:05

to it Well, yeah, well you feel

1:00:07

at least for me after a good haircut. You

1:00:09

feel like you've lost like five pounds just

1:00:12

immediately. So Brandi

1:00:14

in my case There

1:00:17

you go Brandon what's happening

1:00:19

on the discourse? I also

1:00:21

got a haircut. That's what the light is for to

1:00:23

show it off But we

1:00:26

have an episode out on the patreon

1:00:28

and I'll have another more fun centered

1:00:31

episode out this weekend as well Finally

1:00:34

kicking off my movie sort of

1:00:36

side project excited. I'm gonna start

1:00:38

with my madam web and then go right into Civil

1:00:41

War All

1:00:43

right. Oh my god I am curious about

1:00:45

your thoughts about Civil War cuz I saw a grisk

1:00:47

him liked it But he's the only leftist I've been trying

1:00:49

to get me to watch it the only leftist I've

1:00:52

seen that liked it because everyone else is like Why

1:00:54

did they make us a movie about the Civil War

1:00:56

that invokes something that actually like happened in this

1:00:59

country? And then they refused to talk about the

1:01:01

politics of it and it's like that's

1:01:03

what I've heard that's about from

1:01:05

the journalist perspective of Seeing

1:01:08

the horror and it's like well couldn't you have

1:01:10

just done a movie about journalists in any real

1:01:13

conflict that I don't know I haven't seen it.

1:01:15

So I don't know why I'm being judgmental That's

1:01:19

the best way to be judgmental just be

1:01:21

totally right Divorced from you

1:01:23

over there. I'm not gonna look into it.

1:01:25

It's just exactly If

1:01:29

you're taking requests we got to get you to watch unfrosted

1:01:35

Our movie that's the only way I can watch that

1:01:37

is if it's for content Why

1:01:39

I guess not? Anyone

1:01:42

seen it here? No, no, no, we just watch the trailer,

1:01:45

but we want Anything

1:01:47

other than like one of those tier rankings

1:01:49

for types of pop-tart. I'm probably not gonna

1:01:51

like it No, the point is

1:01:54

you won't like it because but it's funny because

1:01:56

Jerry says he can't be funny anymore because of

1:01:58

wokeness And I want you to test that theory

1:02:00

but I don't want to have to go through it so that's why

1:02:02

I saw a scene with Amy

1:02:04

Schumer and it where she's like it's the

1:02:06

60s things moves fast now and I'm just

1:02:08

like oh yeah well you

1:02:10

know what I moved fast from

1:02:12

watching any fucking movie

1:02:15

she's ever in ever again and I

1:02:18

liked train wreck I'm not even gonna ever rewatch

1:02:20

that cuz of that Zionist idiots things move

1:02:22

fast like the plains Israel got from the

1:02:24

Czech Republic whoa I

1:02:27

just don't think every snack food requires a

1:02:29

whole like prequel movie coming

1:02:31

out about it like commodity

1:02:33

needs a film yeah

1:02:35

I know right I'm excited for the fun

1:02:38

yin movie I haven't had those in a

1:02:40

decade but I would be interested to see

1:02:42

how they came about this is just

1:02:44

late-stage cap the film

1:02:46

right exactly all

1:02:50

right guys six four six two five seven thirty nine

1:02:52

twenty see you in the fun house alright

1:02:56

folks six four six two five seven thirty

1:02:58

nine twenty see you in the man

1:03:12

introduce that long Onto Dana

1:03:16

go dHE

1:03:23

stopped beto OH

1:03:40

m you

1:03:47

are on a minute bitt you

1:03:49

are on a minute bitt oh

1:03:52

no bitt wow what

1:03:54

a fucking nightmare a nightmare a number

1:03:56

of guys yeah or a couple of

1:03:58

them put them in rotation Well

1:04:00

the problem with those is they're like 45 seconds long, so

1:04:02

I don't know if they're in that long of a break.

1:04:05

Oh shit, what the fuck is going on?

1:04:08

Why do you want me to talk to you

1:04:10

this morning? No, the white people always be bored

1:04:12

to stuff me. I need half a male girl, okay?

1:04:15

Oh my God, what the fuck? Uh...

1:04:21

This is what... Try

1:04:25

your fucks that limit All

1:04:52

lives matter Have

1:04:54

you tried doing an impression on a

1:04:56

cause, Captain? I think

1:04:59

that there's no reason why unreasonable

1:05:01

people trust me so I can't all agree

1:05:03

with this It's like... You

1:05:05

have a male's off I'm

1:05:11

not a male I'm

1:05:16

not a male I'm

1:05:20

not a male

1:05:23

I'm not a male If there doesn't a little party you think

1:05:25

that America deserves to be taken over by Juhannes Even

1:05:28

at 100 Yeah, last cause

1:05:30

I've been to hell I'm a male I'm

1:05:32

a female I'm a female

1:05:34

I'm a female I'm a

1:05:37

male I'm not a male out

1:06:20

here. There we go. No

1:06:22

binder, Brandon. Brandon is fixing

1:06:24

his light. We

1:06:29

will read

1:06:32

some I.M.s while we

1:06:35

wait for Brandon to fix

1:06:38

the shade thing, which he could have done in the break.

1:06:40

I don't know what you guys were doing, just chatting it

1:06:42

up. Brandon

1:06:44

is now orbiting between Mercury and the

1:06:46

sun. It's

1:06:49

just so funny.

1:06:52

Have you ever seen The

1:06:54

Loris with Cillian Murphy? Yes, I have

1:06:56

seen. Wait, is that The Loris or

1:06:58

is that Sunshine? Oh, Sunshine, that's

1:07:00

what I meant. What

1:07:03

about it? This is just Sunshine too.

1:07:06

Brandon Sutton. You ever see that movie? You're just

1:07:08

wondering. It's a great movie. I have seen the

1:07:10

movie. The movie's default scene. The Mill rind. Hey,

1:07:12

Emma and Matt, here's an irony. White

1:07:23

settler colonialism is a creature of Christianity.

1:07:25

That's what makes Netanyahu a bad Jew.

1:07:27

He's too Christian. The chickens are coming home to roost.

1:07:29

Both ends of the fuse are finally meeting. Also it's

1:07:32

clear that Palestinian protests have had a new sense of

1:07:34

– now have a sense

1:07:36

of formal moral authority. I do think that

1:07:38

the protests have been a massive reason that

1:07:40

this has shifted, even as they publicly proclaim

1:07:42

they're all anti-Semitic or whatever. There's

1:07:46

no way it hasn't. The

1:07:49

phrases like Zion and Canaan

1:07:51

were entirely – Zionism

1:07:53

was first an American project, literally consciously. If

1:07:56

you would go back 300 years and say,

1:07:58

hey, I'm not going to do this. Maybe,

1:08:01

let's see, 400 years, but to the

1:08:03

Salem witch trial era, right? If you

1:08:05

use the phrase, maybe not ism, but

1:08:08

the Zion project or whatever, they would

1:08:10

think we're settling this new land. Canaan

1:08:13

is another phrase they would invoke. I

1:08:15

mean, they operate not the same book.

1:08:18

Right. Did

1:08:20

we pull that lady at the Knesset? Which

1:08:23

number is that? Number

1:08:25

four. Number four? Okay. Oh,

1:08:28

yes. Um, so

1:08:31

this video is pretty nuts. Tali

1:08:33

Gottlieb, she's a member of

1:08:36

the Israeli Knesset, reacted

1:08:39

to reports. Oh,

1:08:41

there he is. That Biden will

1:08:44

withhold certain weapons if

1:08:46

Israel decides to invade Rafa.

1:08:50

And she basically had a m-

1:08:52

is Binder frozen? Oh,

1:08:54

is it? Yeah. I'm just going

1:08:56

to wait then to talk about this. We've

1:09:01

all right. Let's take a call or something. Or

1:09:04

reset. Or I'll just

1:09:06

keep reading some IMs for a second. So

1:09:12

Ryan from Rochester, Emma YouTube has certainly censored

1:09:14

you, whether it's an majority report, the live

1:09:16

feed never comes up on my feed or

1:09:18

notifications. Many people in the discord seem to

1:09:20

notice this also. Not sure how YouTube could

1:09:22

do that. For my- for when I host?

1:09:26

I don't- Sexism. Yes,

1:09:28

it's sexist. Right. That's

1:09:31

the answer. We have to make a marketing pitch out of this.

1:09:33

It's time to- Yeah. Support women and

1:09:35

like my stream. Um- I mean,

1:09:37

it's possible- like the subjects we pick

1:09:39

on Emma Thursday's are probably more prone

1:09:41

to- More genocide. Yeah. I

1:09:46

also swear a lot sometimes. So I

1:09:48

apologize. I mean, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's

1:09:50

me. I mean, we know that

1:09:52

Kowalski monitors the quotient. Classical

1:09:57

Liberal says Emma, you should- Emma should go in

1:09:59

Gaza and see- it works out for

1:10:01

your leftist ideas and your off-shoulder outfits.

1:10:03

I know. I decided to suns out

1:10:05

guns out today because I didn't know

1:10:07

exactly what the weather was going to be. So

1:10:09

I'm like turtleneck up here, open sleeve.

1:10:12

I don't know what I'm talking about.

1:10:14

Okay. Elle

1:10:16

Knipsey on folks on Twitter think they found

1:10:18

TYT contributor Ben Gleib in the videos of

1:10:20

the crowd attacking the UCLA encampment. Please

1:10:25

let that be true. I don't

1:10:27

know if he's still a contributor there. I

1:10:30

don't know what else to say based on

1:10:32

everything I've seen. And then

1:10:34

he tried to

1:10:37

come into my

1:10:42

comments on Instagram and he doesn't want that smoke.

1:10:44

No. Wow. Yeah.

1:10:47

He should get on with Charlie Kirk and talk about how

1:10:50

much they both support Israel. Common

1:10:52

ground. I

1:10:54

feel like Steven Crowder has like a revolving

1:10:56

door of like sidekicks that he's always looking

1:10:58

for, right? Yeah. Yeah.

1:11:00

Well, you got to quite burn right at that company. Desert

1:11:06

Lefty, Las Vegas' culinary union is going

1:11:08

on strike and coincidentally, the casinos are

1:11:10

hiring coincidentally in quotes. Culinary

1:11:12

school seniors is a part of a

1:11:14

work study program. Getting someone involved in

1:11:16

that one may be for a good

1:11:18

interview. Yeah. So they're basically trying to

1:11:20

get scabs. That's

1:11:23

not surprising. Dingas,

1:11:28

hearing about big plastic jugs lately.

1:11:31

What's Emma talking about the Trump hush

1:11:33

money trial? Oh, all right.

1:11:35

That's pretty good. That's

1:11:38

one of our ad reads, Brandon. Free

1:11:42

Palestine says in Farsi, we call Biden a two end

1:11:44

shit stick. He lost the young and left his first

1:11:46

and now he's going to lose the Zionist and centrist

1:11:48

base. Great gambit, sir. Yep. A

1:11:52

lot of Persian idioms are quite

1:11:55

funny because they translate really hilariously

1:11:57

to England. Oh, really? Like

1:12:00

when my mom tries to reassure me about

1:12:02

something, she'll say something in Farsi, which

1:12:05

means if this happens, I'll put

1:12:07

my hair in shit. Meaning

1:12:10

like this will definitely not happen, I promise.

1:12:13

And if it does, I will literally... Put

1:12:15

your hair in shit. Yeah. And

1:12:18

I'm like, mom. That's... I know what you're

1:12:20

saying. I'm like, I know what

1:12:22

you're saying even when you say... Even I don't speak Farsi and

1:12:24

I still know it. Very

1:12:26

graphic, mom. Yeah, totally. Um,

1:12:31

yada, yada, yada said, I said definitely not Sam because let's be

1:12:33

real, Sam hasn't heard a new rap song since 2007. That

1:12:37

might be generous. Sugarhill Gang. What'd

1:12:39

you say? Since the Sugarhill Gang. Um,

1:12:43

Dennis Prager's Bathwater said, it looks

1:12:46

like Biden's limitation of weapon shipments may not even

1:12:48

be a hard stop. This is from Barack Rivet's

1:12:51

Twitter, breaking the White House spokesperson, John Kirby, the

1:12:53

president will continue to provide Israel with the military

1:12:55

capabilities it needs. But he does not

1:12:57

want certain types of American weapons to be used

1:12:59

in specific operations in a specific area. I appreciate

1:13:01

what you're saying, but I do think like we're

1:13:04

beginning to see a very... A

1:13:06

differentiation, I think, in what the negotiations

1:13:08

are saying behind... What

1:13:11

the negotiations are indicating behind the scenes

1:13:13

versus what they're saying publicly. And

1:13:15

that also kind of fits with what Biden

1:13:17

said about them saying that they're going to still

1:13:19

fund the Iron Dome. So I'm

1:13:25

as pessimistic as anybody, but I also

1:13:27

don't want to be like,

1:13:29

I want to be intellectually honest about

1:13:31

the fact that this is the public

1:13:33

shift probably indicates more in

1:13:35

private than it does. And

1:13:38

based on Biden being Israel as tight as

1:13:40

he can publicly, I think that maybe him

1:13:42

saying something publicly indicates more than

1:13:45

it would for a typical president.

1:13:47

Yeah, I mean, but so did the Pelosi

1:13:49

sign in that thing a while ago.

1:13:53

These are shifts, but it's like,

1:13:56

is it a shift just to kind of, again, like we

1:13:58

always say, let air out of the tires? is the

1:14:00

M.R. We should make a t-shirt out of that, honestly.

1:14:02

Let air. It's hard. Or is

1:14:04

it like a genuine shift? And, you know, I

1:14:07

tend to think that Biden knows that

1:14:09

this actually hasn't been about fighting Hamas

1:14:11

and it knows that it's about doing

1:14:14

ethnic cleansing. And I

1:14:16

feel like, you know, look at it from the

1:14:19

perception of a Zionist. They are this close. Yeah.

1:14:21

Doing that to Gaza. You think they're going

1:14:23

to pull up now? Let's parlay this now

1:14:26

that we have a binder back. Let's

1:14:29

play this clip we were going to play earlier. So

1:14:32

this is this

1:14:34

is Tali Gottlieb. She's a member

1:14:36

of the Israeli Knesset. And

1:14:38

she had basically a meltdown

1:14:41

after Biden. It was announced

1:14:44

that Biden will withhold some

1:14:46

weaponry if Israel invades Rafa.

1:14:51

This is what she had to say on

1:14:53

the Knesset floor. It's

1:14:56

in Hebrew if you want. How about play

1:14:59

it and then I'll read what she said afterwards.

1:15:03

Emma will use her best transcription

1:15:05

and powers to speak Hebrew

1:15:07

for all of us. Oh, gosh. Translating

1:15:09

it to English. The U.S.

1:15:11

is threatening not to give us precise missiles. Oh,

1:15:13

yeah. Well, I've got news

1:15:15

for the U.S. We have

1:15:18

imprecise missiles and we will we have the

1:15:20

right to defend ourselves. So maybe instead of

1:15:22

using a precise missile and taking down a

1:15:24

specific room or a specific

1:15:26

building, I'll use my imprecise missiles and

1:15:30

I'll just collapse 10 buildings, 10 buildings. Like

1:15:32

you haven't already. 10 buildings. That's

1:15:34

what I'll do. So

1:15:36

we know, by the way, and I alluded

1:15:38

to this reporting in our opening segment that

1:15:42

Israel has been using dumb bombs

1:15:45

for and this is according to the

1:15:47

U.S.'s own internal report. Can you find

1:15:49

this from CNN? It's December. Don't

1:15:53

have the link in front of me. So Bradley, thanks for pulling

1:15:55

that up. Israel's

1:15:57

been using imprecise weaponry and. The

1:16:01

Americans have known this internally for months.

1:16:05

In yeah, so here we

1:16:07

go. Nearly half of

1:16:09

the Israeli munitions dropped on Gaza

1:16:11

are imprecise dumb bombs. US intelligence

1:16:13

assessment finds. This was leaked to

1:16:16

the, leaked to

1:16:18

CNN. We'll just read the beginning part of this.

1:16:21

Nearly half of the air to ground munitions that

1:16:24

Israel has used in Gaza in its war with

1:16:26

Hamas since October 7th had been unguided, otherwise known

1:16:28

as dumb bombs, according to a new US intelligence

1:16:30

assessment. The assessment compiled by the

1:16:32

Office of the Director of National Intelligence described

1:16:35

by CNN by, to CNN by three sources

1:16:37

who have seen it says

1:16:39

about 40 to 45% of the 29,000 air

1:16:43

to ground munitions Israel has used have

1:16:45

been unguided. The rest have been precision

1:16:47

guided munitions. The assessment says unguided

1:16:49

munitions are typically less precise and can pose

1:16:52

a greater threat to civilians. We understand that.

1:16:54

Okay, so that was the point of it.

1:16:58

We know that they have the ability to

1:17:00

be incredibly precise. We know that they have

1:17:02

AI systems such as lavender where they can

1:17:05

determine who's a terrorist, which we now

1:17:07

find out they basically determine every male

1:17:09

is a terrorist. Is it a reasonably

1:17:12

enough like a man? Right. And

1:17:14

then the ratio that they determine is

1:17:17

acceptable for killing that terrorist is in

1:17:19

the hundreds of civilians. So if they're

1:17:21

in a building or they're in a

1:17:23

home, the military has no qualms about

1:17:26

just killing them. And all of this

1:17:28

is really even more formal

1:17:30

than the actual reality of it, which is

1:17:32

they're just trying to kill as many people

1:17:34

as possible. And that's exactly it. And

1:17:38

so you see it in that fury

1:17:40

in her voice. I love her tears. I

1:17:42

want her to cry her little fascist heart

1:17:45

away. But I

1:17:47

want even more action than this. The fact

1:17:49

that we're not stopping all arms sales and

1:17:51

I want Iron Dome to be done too,

1:17:53

then it would force Israel to actually

1:17:55

have to engage with its Arab surrounding.

1:18:00

nations and maybe not be

1:18:02

a belligerent genocidal maniacal

1:18:04

pariah state, then they would have to

1:18:06

engage in diplomacy as opposed to brute

1:18:08

force potentially. But

1:18:11

we should be talking about sanctioning Israel. It's

1:18:14

a good move forward, but even that

1:18:16

you see. And Ben Gavir is

1:18:18

tweeting, Biden loves Hamas. Like- The

1:18:21

other way around, Hamas loves Biden. Oh,

1:18:23

yeah. I forgot. It's mutual.

1:18:26

It's mutual. It's mutual. Right.

1:18:29

I'm going to put a attitude on my

1:18:31

body because like,

1:18:34

what a stupid, stupid, but that's exactly

1:18:36

right. Like you don't support our genocide.

1:18:39

I mean, you're an anti-Semite and you love

1:18:41

Hamas. I mean, it's just beyond like

1:18:44

falling on deaf ears for most sane

1:18:47

people, for all sane people at this

1:18:49

point. I think it speaks to Biden's naivety

1:18:51

a little bit too, because it's like it

1:18:53

shows just how difficult any support

1:18:55

or any good will he ever

1:18:57

thought he had with this, with

1:19:00

Israeli officials is. He's

1:19:03

doing something that people have been calling for at

1:19:06

least six months now, and he's done

1:19:08

it basically twice. And literally

1:19:10

the response is from people who

1:19:12

have power, people in Likud, people in the ruling

1:19:14

parties to say, you're now a surrogate for

1:19:17

a terrorist organization. And fine, if you don't

1:19:19

give us the precise weapons, we'll just keep

1:19:21

leveling buildings and

1:19:23

kill civilians. I like that. We're going to

1:19:25

start leveling tendons. We all see the videos

1:19:28

guys. Start being the operative word. It's like,

1:19:30

no, you mean continue. But

1:19:33

the idea that

1:19:36

anything would appease, anything would be

1:19:38

enough to appease certain factions in

1:19:40

Israel, it's clearly futile. So

1:19:44

his unwillingness to do so, I

1:19:46

think even looks more foolish because it's

1:19:48

not as if there's anything he could

1:19:50

do absent of just literally, you know,

1:19:53

maybe, maybe US troops on the ground

1:19:55

in Gaza would maybe be what's something

1:19:57

to, you know, satiate a maniac like

1:19:59

Ben in Gevir, but absent

1:20:02

that, probably nothing else. Right. So

1:20:04

he just wants them to clap and say, good

1:20:06

job, look at how brave they were going into

1:20:09

Rafah to fight terrorism. That's what they're... And they,

1:20:11

you know, will keep you sending billions of dollars

1:20:13

with the military aid. Yeah, I think

1:20:15

the Bradley's point, that's why I always felt like playing

1:20:17

both sides, which is what it feels like he's doing

1:20:19

now, playing both sides, was

1:20:21

never going to be a good strategy

1:20:23

for winning either support from Israeli supporters,

1:20:26

like militant Zionist, or support

1:20:28

from the left. It seems almost like the only

1:20:30

people this is for are for the liberals

1:20:32

who want to post online about how like,

1:20:34

oh, leftists are never satisfied with what Biden's

1:20:37

doing. Like he's, don't you see,

1:20:39

he's finally listening to you, just another way

1:20:41

to stir up or insulate that base from

1:20:43

criticism that they've been supporting genocide this whole

1:20:45

time. But you know, that's no way to

1:20:47

win an election. Yeah.

1:20:52

Um, let's,

1:20:55

we'll quickly take a call. Oh, wait, I

1:20:57

have the voicemail on. I'm so sorry, guys.

1:20:59

The number is 646-257-3920. You

1:21:03

can call in now. RFK's

1:21:06

brainworm says sarcastically, but Emma, they're the

1:21:08

most moral and if we take away

1:21:10

our munitions, they will use the immoral

1:21:12

tactics. Really makes you seem like a

1:21:14

petulant child. Yes. It's a

1:21:16

good thing you said the brainworm was being

1:21:18

sarcastic. Otherwise I thought it would be a

1:21:20

sincere message from the brainworm. I

1:21:24

mean, that might be the brainworm that got into

1:21:26

RFK's head because now he's a big Zionist, he's

1:21:28

a massive, massive Zionist, even to the right of

1:21:31

Biden on Israel. Seeing a Twitter headline

1:21:33

where it's like RFK

1:21:35

campaign manager assures, assures press

1:21:38

that a brainworm

1:21:40

will not affect his campaigning. I'm like, we've

1:21:42

jumped the shark on the 2024 campaign. We're

1:21:48

in like season 16, like, like, Grey's

1:21:50

Anatomy. Yeah, like COVID season Grey's Anatomy.

1:21:53

Like, oh, wow, wow. Oh, wow. I

1:21:55

think party candidate gets a brainworm. Frankly, I want to say

1:21:57

I was just. telling

1:22:00

somebody the other day that things seemed more

1:22:02

surreal and they were just telling me how

1:22:04

like no, no, no, it's just because you're

1:22:06

paying attention more now. But then this is

1:22:08

what I meant, you know? Right.

1:22:11

Like there's music work. Right. Like

1:22:13

he literally has a condition that is kind

1:22:16

of a meme associated with people who are

1:22:18

stupid. It's just, it's just like, come on,

1:22:20

tone it down a little bit on the

1:22:22

symbolism. What I like is that the brain worm

1:22:24

was dead. Like his brain was so

1:22:26

toxic that the worm didn't survive. Like yeah,

1:22:28

I mean like, like worm surviving like Chernobyl,

1:22:30

I think, you know, not to be anti-science.

1:22:33

So it just really goes to show you

1:22:35

that not a lot of fertile soil there.

1:22:37

You had a tweet that was like, that's the

1:22:39

least you would be more surprised to find a

1:22:41

worm in dirt than you would be to find

1:22:43

a worm in our brain. It's

1:22:47

true. It was very good. It

1:22:49

was very good. I

1:22:51

was, of course, I've been shadowbanned by

1:22:54

Lord Musk. So the people don't get to

1:22:56

see bangers like that anymore. You got to

1:22:59

go directly to my timeline. I mean, I

1:23:01

have one because it's not your real name

1:23:03

too. That's part of why people don't find

1:23:05

you. Oh, change it, Brandon.

1:23:08

I feel, you know, I don't want to get this because

1:23:11

I feel like it was very popular to have like a

1:23:13

user handle when I first joined Twitter. And now everyone's like,

1:23:15

you got to put your real name in social security number

1:23:17

there. I don't feel like that's right. Maybe that was the

1:23:19

case in like 2008. Where

1:23:21

you been, buddy? We'll find, go to

1:23:23

my profile. You

1:23:26

can find it. Ignore the tweets about Gollum.

1:23:29

Those are inappropriate. But I am

1:23:31

wondering, I am wondering what happened

1:23:34

to the worm. Like did it

1:23:36

die because like you said it

1:23:39

ate, it took a bite out of his

1:23:41

brain and it was so toxic it poisoned him

1:23:44

or, or did the worm go

1:23:46

in there looking for a brain and stopped you

1:23:48

there because there was nothing there to eat. I'm

1:23:50

wondering. That's a good point. Which could have been.

1:23:53

It's totally unrelated, but now I just

1:23:55

have the song Dr. Worm stuck in my

1:23:57

head from They Might Be Giant. Right.

1:24:00

I think that's where they filmed the

1:24:02

video, just inside of RFK's cavernous empty

1:24:04

head. On

1:24:07

that note, let's take a

1:24:09

call. We'll see if any of

1:24:11

our callers have this brain worm.

1:24:14

We shall see. Call in from

1:24:16

a- I hope so. God, I hope so. I'm

1:24:18

calling from a- If you're a brain worm, come in. Call in.

1:24:20

Tell us who it is. What do you call in? Please call

1:24:22

in. 404 area code. Who's

1:24:25

this where you're calling from? This

1:24:27

is DSA Aaron in Atlanta. Oh,

1:24:30

DSA Aaron, a long time

1:24:32

Iammer DSA Aaron in Atlanta.

1:24:35

What's going on? I

1:24:38

called in a couple of weeks ago to talk

1:24:40

about that candidate, Gabriel Sanchez. Yes.

1:24:42

We actually just- we just

1:24:45

had a electoral meeting yesterday on Zoom

1:24:47

about it. And it's

1:24:49

like the first time I've actually got to

1:24:52

meet him and listen to him talk. He is amazing. I just

1:24:54

wanted to say that. He is actually

1:24:56

doing really well in the early verding right now,

1:24:59

surprisingly, because the candidate he's going against is

1:25:01

like a corporate Democrat. She's

1:25:04

not involved in like nobody even know

1:25:06

the people we've canvassed. Nobody even knows

1:25:08

who she is because she's just

1:25:10

backed by a big money donor. And

1:25:12

she backs Republicans constantly on stuff. So

1:25:14

she's pretty terrible. And where he lives

1:25:16

is where the district he's in is

1:25:18

like a Cobb County district, which

1:25:20

is a very Hispanic population

1:25:23

in Gabriel is first generation

1:25:26

from Columbia. His parents are

1:25:28

from Columbia. So he is really

1:25:30

doing great in the polls right now. They're

1:25:32

surprised actually because you know, usually early voting is older

1:25:35

people. So they didn't think he would be doing that

1:25:37

well. But I didn't have- I was going

1:25:39

to pull up the numbers. I didn't think I was going to be

1:25:41

the first call in, but I ended up being the first call. You're

1:25:44

all good. It's probably my bad because

1:25:46

of the voicemail. Y'all

1:25:50

have been great today. The interviews

1:25:52

have always been great. But

1:25:55

he is doing very well. I just want to reiterate

1:25:57

how well he's doing. He might be.

1:26:00

We've never had anybody in the southeast, especially Jordan,

1:26:02

no candidate. There's never been

1:26:04

a DSA candidate that's ever won. Nobody,

1:26:06

if he wins, which a lot of people are

1:26:08

thinking it might be likely how well he's doing,

1:26:12

that he'll be the first DSA candidate in

1:26:14

the southeast period. So that's

1:26:16

a really great start for us. And he's

1:26:18

just doing the right thing. He's just really great.

1:26:21

I mean, I'm really excited for it. I'm hoping,

1:26:23

because y'all, I know in New York, y'all have

1:26:25

a lot more DSA candidates that represent and it's

1:26:27

just so much different down here. So

1:26:29

he's really doing the right things to get

1:26:31

that started. But I

1:26:34

do have one other question for you and I've just

1:26:36

blanked. Oh, here it is. Don't

1:26:39

make fun of me on this. I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

1:26:42

With everything going on with Palestine

1:26:44

and everything like that and how bad Biden's been

1:26:47

on it and how bad

1:26:49

Trump's just terrible period about everything. So

1:26:52

would it be crazy? And I know

1:26:54

it is crazy. Would it be crazy

1:26:56

for Bernie just to be

1:26:58

like, hey, I'm jumping in right now. Would

1:27:01

it be crazy? I'd love that. Well,

1:27:03

I'd love that. I'd love that. It would be

1:27:06

crazy. It would be funny. It would be

1:27:08

funny. But the convention, 35 to 80, everybody's

1:27:10

going to vote for him. Right.

1:27:14

But Super Tuesdays already. It's too late,

1:27:16

buddy. We've had like, oh, I'm

1:27:18

sorry. I knew all the delegates are going to

1:27:21

switch to me once they hear my position. Yeah.

1:27:25

I knew that too. And I just wasn't,

1:27:27

I knew that. I'm so stupid. No, you're

1:27:29

absolutely not stupid. I mean, something should happen.

1:27:31

Like local elections. I was thinking local elections.

1:27:33

Sorry. I mean, that's where the focus has to

1:27:36

be because I think people

1:27:38

have to start organizing and fighting

1:27:40

for issues and creating lists of

1:27:42

people who will help you organize

1:27:44

the future for the reality

1:27:47

that Biden might lose. And

1:27:50

that's what I'm scared about. That's how it's

1:27:52

sounding like I'm a

1:27:54

lot of people my age and younger

1:27:56

are not going to vote for Biden. They're

1:27:59

not. and not support a genocide, a

1:28:01

person that supports the genocide. And there's a certain

1:28:03

type of person who will say, like people like

1:28:05

you who are putting in the work should be

1:28:07

spending their time trying to get people to vote

1:28:09

for Jill Biden. And I just think that's a

1:28:11

waste of effort. That's not actually the best use

1:28:13

of people's time right now.

1:28:15

I can't tell people to vote for somebody that's a genocide

1:28:17

to support our kids. Yep. It's

1:28:20

not morally right. So I mean, obviously. Get

1:28:22

people to vote for local and statewide candidates.

1:28:24

That's where it matters right now. That's where

1:28:26

the focus should be. You're right. Yeah. I'm

1:28:30

so right about that. Georgia is definitely on the

1:28:32

upswing in that we are definitely turning more purple than

1:28:34

ever. So it's really great

1:28:36

what's going on here. And I hope it

1:28:38

starts, because I'm ready for change in the state. This

1:28:41

state's pretty terrible. So I'm ready for a lot of

1:28:43

change. Even if you can't bring

1:28:45

yourself to vote for Biden, right? Which

1:28:47

I understand. Please, I don't

1:28:49

want it to hurt down ballot. Ballot

1:28:51

democratic. Especially if they've taken a good stance

1:28:53

on Israel Palestine. Right. I

1:28:56

do know in my state, I

1:28:58

kind of have to vote for Biden because it is a

1:29:00

purple state. Right. And we need this state.

1:29:02

So I get it, but other states, I feel like New York,

1:29:05

I feel like they do have a chance to

1:29:07

actually do that more. Vote for somebody

1:29:09

else. I know right now I'm in a tight

1:29:11

spot where I have to vote for the right

1:29:13

guy. But I wish they'd

1:29:15

give us better candidate. I can't believe we,

1:29:18

like this country allows candidates to even be

1:29:20

brought up that are just bad. That's the

1:29:22

system that we inherited from slave owners. Go

1:29:24

ahead, Ben. You don't know exactly. You

1:29:28

have three main choices this coming

1:29:31

November and all three of them

1:29:33

apparently have brain worms. This is, pick the one

1:29:35

that has had least

1:29:39

of their brain eaten, I guess. Pick

1:29:41

the one who has the most brain matter

1:29:43

left. That's the whole evil looking

1:29:46

for you. I think most of them have,

1:29:48

everybody in my state that doesn't live

1:29:50

around in Atlanta, I think has brain worms the

1:29:52

way they talk. So I think people were really,

1:29:54

that might be bad for, might be good for

1:29:56

if gave her Georgia because I think everybody in

1:29:58

this state has brain worms. Oh my gosh. Alright

1:30:01

well, I appreciate the call Aaron. Yeah, there's

1:30:03

a lot of points people out here. Now thank you very much, I'm left as best, y'all

1:30:05

have a great day. Thanks,

1:30:08

you too. Let's do the Marker Channel. That

1:30:10

should be an actual poll, we should print that up. Most

1:30:14

brain matter left, 2024. You

1:30:16

came up with it, right?

1:30:20

My brain worm's still out of the kitchen. My

1:30:24

brain worm has too much to eat actually. This

1:30:29

is a big story, so I wanted to make sure we

1:30:32

got to it. Marjorie Taylor

1:30:34

Greene surprisingly, despite not having

1:30:36

the votes, brought

1:30:39

up a motion to vacate Speaker

1:30:41

Johnson because he passed through Ukraine

1:30:43

funding in the supplemental

1:30:45

package along with Israel and Taiwan

1:30:47

funding. The

1:30:51

fact that he worked with Democrats, even though

1:30:53

he has truly the slimmest of majorities humanly

1:30:55

possible in the

1:30:57

House for the Republican Party,

1:31:00

there's no way he can't with the

1:31:02

Democratic Senate and the Democratic governor. Marjorie

1:31:05

Taylor Greene lives in fantasy

1:31:07

land. Actually she really lives

1:31:10

in, I think, a joint slack

1:31:12

with Steve Bannon, who's been pushing

1:31:14

for this for sure. She

1:31:18

brought up the vote after having threatened to

1:31:20

do so for weeks at this point and

1:31:22

it failed. This was her

1:31:24

filing this motion for vacate and it overwhelmingly

1:31:28

lost. You can

1:31:30

hear the rest of the members start to boo. I

1:31:33

seek recognition to give notice of my intent

1:31:35

to raise the question of the privileges of

1:31:37

the House. The form

1:31:39

of the resolution is as follows.

1:31:43

Declaring the office of Speaker of

1:31:45

the House representatives to be vacant.

1:31:53

This is the uni party

1:31:55

for the American people watching.

1:32:00

Order. The

1:32:13

gentleman from Georgia is recognized. Whereas

1:32:16

the House Republican Conference elected

1:32:18

Mike Johnson on October 25, 2023, after

1:32:21

three and

1:32:24

a half weeks of trying to decide on

1:32:26

a new Speaker of the House. Mr. Speaker,

1:32:28

the House is not in order. House

1:32:34

will be in order. Wow, snitch. I

1:32:37

mean, so it's funny to be,

1:32:40

only 10 Democrat, sorry, 10

1:32:42

Republicans joined her. Andy

1:32:45

Biggs, Eric Burleson, Eli

1:32:47

Crane, Warren Davidson, Paul Gosar,

1:32:50

Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massey,

1:32:52

Alex Mooney, Barry Moore, Chip

1:32:54

Roy, Victoria Spartz. So

1:32:57

you don't really see many of the

1:33:00

names that you did the first time

1:33:02

around when they successfully vacated Kevin McCarthy.

1:33:05

So the lines have been kind of

1:33:07

rearranged here. And

1:33:09

then there were seven Democrats that voted

1:33:12

present because Hakeem Jeffries wanted to give

1:33:14

Mike Johnson a bit

1:33:16

of a carrot or somewhat of

1:33:19

a reward for working with

1:33:21

them and bucking those people in the party

1:33:23

and passing the supplemental. I

1:33:28

wish that they would let Republicans just

1:33:30

flounder and all vote against every

1:33:33

speaker in unison. But

1:33:35

I think Jeffries knew that that wasn't going to

1:33:37

happen because there were some that had already

1:33:40

pledged to do so, like Tom Swasey

1:33:42

and people who want to

1:33:44

make it seem like they support government functioning. But

1:33:47

this is not over. Marjorie

1:33:50

Taylor Greene can do this again. There's

1:33:52

still the opportunity because

1:33:54

of the agreement that McCarthy made, the

1:33:56

devil's bargain to get into power. They

1:33:59

can do this motion to vade. it again, and Jeffries,

1:34:01

to his credit, has said, we're

1:34:03

not making any promises on saving you another

1:34:05

time. We'll

1:34:09

see. We'll see. I mean, it's

1:34:11

just like in an election year to do this, even Trump,

1:34:13

that's the angle that's so funny. Even

1:34:15

Trump is telling Marjorie

1:34:17

Taylor Greene and the Bannon crew

1:34:19

to stand down, but they keep

1:34:21

doing it anyway because Trump's worried

1:34:24

it hurts his reelection chances when

1:34:26

Republicans look this insane. I

1:34:28

think so too, which I'm happy about. There's

1:34:34

not much to say about Marjorie

1:34:36

Taylor Greene going off the rails

1:34:39

here to try to spark

1:34:42

what happened with a lot more

1:34:44

Republicans last time around. She's

1:34:47

not very good at this, obviously. I'm

1:34:50

talking about politics in general, obviously Republicans

1:34:52

suck, but clearly, the

1:34:54

Republicans who really wanted

1:34:57

to take down, oh my God, it's been so

1:34:59

long. I forgot his name already, McCarthy. They

1:35:03

obviously were organized enough in

1:35:07

their political endeavor to get enough

1:35:09

Republicans for it to actually matter,

1:35:11

whereas Marjorie Taylor Greene does

1:35:14

not have that same political acumen.

1:35:17

Also, the Democrats voted

1:35:20

overwhelmingly to save Johnson

1:35:22

in this situation. Kevin

1:35:24

McCarthy, I think, was

1:35:26

so reviled and was

1:35:29

such a self-dealer in that way. Even

1:35:32

theocrat Mike Johnson is doing a better

1:35:34

job of working with Democrats on the

1:35:36

other side, so he didn't piss them

1:35:38

off in that way. Next

1:35:41

time, please just let Republicans fight.

1:35:43

Oh, this is Trump's response. Here

1:35:48

we go. I have ... Oh,

1:35:50

are you okay? There you go. I think you're

1:35:53

better than mine. I absolutely love Marjorie Taylor Greene.

1:35:55

She's got spirit, she's got fight capitalized, and I

1:35:57

believe she'll be around and on our side

1:35:59

for a long time. long time to come however

1:36:01

right now republicans have to be fighting the radical

1:36:04

left democrats and all the damage they've done

1:36:06

to our country with the majority of one shortly

1:36:08

growing to three or four we're not in a

1:36:10

position this is boring trump this is actually

1:36:12

very funny when he gets put in this situation

1:36:14

where he has to be a pragmatist? yeah well

1:36:17

he says he says what i think is interesting is

1:36:19

with a majority of one shortly growing to three or

1:36:22

four we're not in a position of voting on a

1:36:24

motion to vacate at some point we may very well

1:36:26

be but this is not the time johnson

1:36:29

has been trying his absolute hardest to bear hug

1:36:31

trump to be like you can't touch me because

1:36:33

the big man won't let me won't let you

1:36:35

and then trump

1:36:38

here is being like yeah i'm keeping

1:36:40

my eyes open if we showed disunity

1:36:42

which would be portrayed as chaos it

1:36:44

would negatively affect everything mike jess is

1:36:46

a good man who is trying very hard hmm

1:36:49

he's trying is he succeeding? someone like trump is

1:36:51

not draining the swamp he's like look we need

1:36:53

some of the swamp i like speakers of the

1:36:55

house who don't who don't get

1:36:57

vacated but we're actually floating in some of the swamp

1:37:00

right now so we keep our board you float so don't

1:37:02

drain it yet they're

1:37:04

just like his unruly children like the way

1:37:06

he has to deal with them they're all

1:37:08

just like sycophantic unruly children for his like

1:37:11

you're a good girl he's interested in dad

1:37:14

i mean and that would make sense given his

1:37:16

inconsistency on this front because he's never actually dealt

1:37:18

with children least of all his own one

1:37:20

time in his entire life yeah can we

1:37:22

have somebody go like spank them on the

1:37:25

bottom or something we

1:37:28

have a fun bitcoin clip if you want to get to that

1:37:31

what do you mean you want one? i want

1:37:33

to get to that you're champing at the bit

1:37:35

over there okay so yeah i have no idea

1:37:37

we should get to this so this is uh

1:37:40

this this one viral on reddit this is from

1:37:42

the ohio state university commencement address at buckeye stadium

1:37:44

here and uh well

1:37:46

i think this clip explains

1:37:48

itself but we'll have a more zoomed in version

1:37:50

after this but here's them getting a message from

1:37:52

a uh a guy named chris

1:37:55

pan a social entrepreneur I

1:38:00

am a good boy. People

1:38:12

are bombing all over here. It's

1:38:19

decentralized and fine. It's

1:38:23

decentralized and it's decentralized. I'm

1:38:26

a social entrepreneur. Let's

1:38:29

play his actual thing here. Maybe go

1:38:31

a little bit earlier than this. This

1:38:35

is about right. We give

1:38:37

the full context for his pitch. The

1:38:40

actual thing where he pitches Bitcoin is

1:38:42

decentralized and gets grown is not the

1:38:44

most cringe-worthy part of that five-minute section

1:38:46

of video. The

1:38:50

mechanics of investing are actually easy, but

1:38:52

it comes down to mindset. The

1:38:55

most common barriers are fear, laziness,

1:38:59

and closed-mindedness. I thought I was

1:39:01

going to say a real quick barrier. Can

1:39:03

anybody think of another barrier to investing

1:39:05

that we could maybe think about besides

1:39:07

fear? What was it? Laziness

1:39:10

and closed-mindedness. Paper

1:39:12

hands, obviously. Paper hands,

1:39:14

that's one. I

1:39:17

thought he was going to do fear of reading that. Is

1:39:19

that a Holdler? I'd

1:39:22

say I am a bit

1:39:25

lazy, I'll be honest. I'm not super

1:39:27

fearful, but I

1:39:29

think the reason I've invested is I don't

1:39:31

have capital to invest. I have to pay advice

1:39:33

to landlord it for rent. That's

1:39:36

an excuse. It's never been easier to download

1:39:38

an app. To download an app,

1:39:41

ride your bicycle through a dangerous city to

1:39:43

deliver people food who are ungrateful for it,

1:39:46

and then lose all your money in a

1:39:48

speculative asset on another app. Alright,

1:39:51

well let's give him a chance. Fear,

1:39:54

laziness, and closed-mindedness.

1:39:58

Great investors are open-minded. and understand

1:40:01

things before other people. So

1:40:04

I know this might feel polarizing, but

1:40:07

I encourage you to keep an open mind right now. I

1:40:11

see Bitcoin as

1:40:13

a very misunderstood asset class.

1:40:17

Okay, pause it. I'm so sorry. So you

1:40:19

can do a PowerPoint. Yes. He

1:40:24

brought visuals to the commencement.

1:40:27

I mean, this is just

1:40:29

like honestly such a disrespectful

1:40:31

display to the educational process.

1:40:35

Like, I'm sorry. Have

1:40:37

an academic. Have

1:40:39

a select. If Oprah comes or an

1:40:41

actor, I don't care. Have a former

1:40:43

athlete come. Somebody who actually like does

1:40:46

something that has value. As talent?

1:40:49

Yeah, or has value. This is just

1:40:51

an investment. This

1:40:53

is a pitch to the graduates to like scam them

1:40:55

that the... The

1:40:57

administration approved! No, that's

1:41:00

the point I wanted to go in on because

1:41:02

why did they invite this guy? Because he was

1:41:04

homecoming king 25 years ago. He's a social entrepreneur.

1:41:07

Mr. Pan, who graduated from Ohio State in

1:41:09

99, worked for PepsiCo on Facebook before starting

1:41:11

his own company, MyIntent. Started his own company,

1:41:13

MyIntent. Let's take a look at the great

1:41:15

things this company did to earn him a

1:41:17

place on the stage. MyIntent

1:41:20

makes bracelets with a customer chosen

1:41:22

word that helps the wearer remember

1:41:24

to live intentionally. This

1:41:28

looks like one of those like pitches that you'd

1:41:30

see on like Shark Tank that's Dragon's Den for

1:41:33

all of my UK fans out there. That would

1:41:35

get you like kicked off by, you know,

1:41:37

Mark Cuban. Wouldn't get you on the

1:41:39

show. So it's Livestrong Bracelets for finance

1:41:42

dipshit? It's personalized Livestrong. Right, right. Oh,

1:41:44

look, I forgot to live intentionally today.

1:41:47

Sorry, but I forgot to grab the group. I also

1:41:49

have to take steroids. Am I locking... Did I lock

1:41:51

in today? Did I grind today? Yeah, but okay. I

1:41:53

used to love Livestar Bracelets. Not the official ones. I

1:41:57

do think it is like especially... in

1:42:01

a year where we've heard of commencement

1:42:04

speakers being removed for wanting to

1:42:06

talk about social issues, global

1:42:10

issues like what's happening in Palestine.

1:42:13

And here we have a situation with like,

1:42:16

can I promote a Get Rich Quick scheme

1:42:18

during my speech? Sure. Do you mind if

1:42:20

I show this presentation on that

1:42:22

Get Rich Quick scheme that I have prepared? Yeah,

1:42:24

we'll give it. We'll queue it up for you.

1:42:27

This is grotesque, especially this

1:42:29

year. USC canceled

1:42:31

their commencement completely to

1:42:34

avoid that valedictorian

1:42:36

speaking, basically, for safety concerns,

1:42:38

supposedly. And as you said,

1:42:41

Columbia also canceled theirs.

1:42:43

OSU knows such problem because this guy can

1:42:45

just talk about how it's easy to buy

1:42:47

a house with fucking big things. He's

1:42:50

not done yet, though. Can

1:42:57

I just mention also how loud those boos

1:42:59

have to be for those mics to pick

1:43:01

it up? Oh, yeah. In that first video,

1:43:03

it was just like an iPhone video from

1:43:05

like the crowd. It's going to be loud.

1:43:08

But for like, but like they set up

1:43:10

that system with the intent of it only

1:43:13

picking up the speaker, you know, obviously, there's going to

1:43:15

be chatter around and they don't want that to be

1:43:17

picked up. This is so loud that

1:43:19

those microphones are picking this up. It's

1:43:28

decentralized and finite, which

1:43:30

means no government can print more at will. In

1:43:33

the early days, the exchanges for Bitcoin were prone

1:43:35

to hacks and fraud. But the

1:43:37

issue has been resolved with the recent launch of

1:43:40

the Bitcoin ETFs backed by two of the world's

1:43:42

largest asset managers. Oh,

1:43:44

wow. Okay. Wow. Sure, man. So

1:43:46

anyone can hold these ETFs

1:43:49

in your retirement account. I'd

1:43:51

love to do a demo for you. Love to hear about retirement

1:43:53

at my college graduation.

1:43:57

Yeah. But here's what I want to say.

1:44:00

the president who actually is responsible

1:44:02

for the charlatan being put on

1:44:04

stage in front of educated people,

1:44:06

like just certified educated people, he

1:44:09

gets what has come into him right here with

1:44:11

this little demonstration. Because someone named Graham Page writes

1:44:13

an OSU president chose this guy and has

1:44:15

a large position in Bitcoin. Is that the

1:44:17

truth? I didn't know about his position but it

1:44:19

makes a lot of sense. I'd love

1:44:21

to do a demo for you. So

1:44:24

President Carter, would you mind if I

1:44:26

borrow your hand? So

1:44:29

here I have

1:44:32

four quarters. Do you verify that? Holy

1:44:34

shit! Now

1:44:36

he's doing close-up magic. If you interned at

1:44:38

university here four years ago, four

1:44:42

quarters is now worth three quarters of purchasing

1:44:44

power. So that's the quarter that you never

1:44:46

really lost due to inflation. Now

1:44:48

the three quarters that are left I'm going to put back here. Now

1:44:52

would you be the innovation open-minded

1:44:54

breath? Okay a

1:44:57

little more. Okay. I think we need a

1:45:00

little more. Wow.

1:45:02

Okay so this is the old quarter.

1:45:04

You guys ready? Yeah. I

1:45:07

can hate everybody. It's going. Oh

1:45:14

my god. I learned magic trick last week

1:45:16

just to be able to have this moment.

1:45:19

Oh well. Oh my

1:45:21

god. I would have left. I didn't

1:45:23

go to my own graduation because I was afraid it

1:45:25

was going to be like this. Yeah. And

1:45:28

I would it would be hard not to

1:45:31

leave. I would leave. That

1:45:33

will be my diploma. That president literally

1:45:35

is like get on with it

1:45:37

Chris. I'm not going to

1:45:39

blow into your hand one more time. People

1:45:41

just got to do the the basic sort

1:45:44

of math here. What is what's more likely

1:45:46

that this guy who makes bracelets for a

1:45:48

living has

1:45:50

this key to riches and wants you all to

1:45:53

get in on that key too to make all

1:45:55

this my two because I'll be honest if I

1:45:57

knew about a secret commodity that I could be

1:45:59

buy up and is only going to appreciate value.

1:46:01

I'm not telling you dumbasses about it. I'm buying

1:46:04

as much of that as the lowest price I

1:46:06

can and then selling it later. I'm not being

1:46:08

like, hey, everyone buy it. But

1:46:10

if I was sitting on a whole bunch of

1:46:12

it that I previously bought that I need to

1:46:14

get out from under of, I would be saying,

1:46:16

hey, everybody's going to want this stuff. Do you?

1:46:18

I'll use the gift of riches. I just sent

1:46:20

a link. I'm sorry, Brandon. I

1:46:23

just wanted to make sure that we have

1:46:25

the actual backing of

1:46:27

what our wonderful viewer just sent us

1:46:29

because this is great context that

1:46:31

the Ohio State president, this was

1:46:34

from a day ago, his

1:46:36

connection to a nuclear Bitcoin mining operation.

1:46:38

When the controversial speaker at Ohio State's

1:46:40

spring commencement called for help with a

1:46:42

Bitcoin demonstration on stage, he asked for

1:46:45

an assistant who happened to be an

1:46:47

industry player, blah, blah, blah, dammit. Scroll

1:46:49

down to the actual part here. Pan

1:46:53

noted in an Instagram post the day before

1:46:55

the ceremony that Carter is involved in a

1:46:57

multi-million dollar Bitcoin business. While the

1:46:59

pair share an apparent interest in cryptocurrency, Carter told

1:47:01

NBC 4 on a Wednesday interview that the

1:47:03

connection was completely random. Totally

1:47:06

random. Yes. Federal

1:47:08

documents back up plan statement 2021

1:47:10

filings with the US SEC disclosed

1:47:12

that Carter joined Bitcoin miner Tara Wolf and

1:47:15

his board of directors when it became a publicly

1:47:17

traded company. The

1:47:19

point being is that, yes,

1:47:21

the president used this opportunity

1:47:23

for thousands of kids who

1:47:25

like he's supposed to be

1:47:27

responsible for educating to

1:47:30

boost his speculative asset that he clearly

1:47:32

has a ton of holdings in. I

1:47:34

mean, what a perfect, what a perfect.

1:47:37