It Could Happen Here Weekly 222

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Hello everyone, my name is Dana Al-Kurd, and this is It Could Happen Here. I'm an associate professor of political science and a researcher of Arab and Palestinian politics. Today on the podcast, we have Danielle Cantor, and she'll be talking to us about mutual aid work in Israel, leftist politics in Israel, and her personal journey. Thank you so much for being on the show. Hi. So yeah, if you'd like to introduce us to yourself and your organization, Culture of Solidarity, that would be fantastic. Sure. Yeah. Hi, I'm Danielle. I run with a beautiful community in mutual aid called Culture of Solidarity. I don't know if people here are familiar with mutual aid work or if I should give a little explanation about that. I mean, you can give a spiel. Yeah. A little spiel, yeah. So basically, kind of caring for your community through different like aid programs while resisting the systems that kind of preserve their poverty and their oppression. That's how I view what mutual aid work is. And yeah, so we run a mutual aid. It runs in many forms, but mostly it's we have a food security program that supports kind of the people that fall in between the cracks of the systems. Within Israel and Palestine. Well, obviously the systems within Israel and in Palestine, we work mainly in Area C in the West Bank and Masafel Yata. Yeah. So we do food security, like food packs that are culturally appropriate for each community receiving them based off of what they are asking, whether it's diapers, baby formula, you know, fit to each holiday. Now we just finished or we're still in the midst of a Ramadan annual campaign where they're all going to be boxes fit for the holiday. And we host, well, we had a community center for the past five years. We've been a collective, I guess, since March, 2021 COVID hit. So basically, when that started, it was kind of like we saw that there was going to be a lot of food waste, like an obscene amount of food waste, because all the restaurants, offices, hotels, who would be closing and we thought we'd kind of rescue that food and redistribute it to communities that were in need until the government kind of got on their feet and understood what their virus was. And that was kind of the beginning of our deep, deep political awakening of this place, thinking that there would be a system that would come and serve the vulnerable communities around us. So that's when it started. And I think only like a few months into that when we thought we were kind of just like, yeah, good citizens doing the work and understanding how politically charged it is to serve your community when they're actively being oppressed by the systems that are supposed to care for them. And I think in that moment we understood that we want to not only serve our neighbors or community, we also need to learn about these root causes of oppression and what brought them to this position in the first place. People often say like, oh, someone's poor, they don't have food in their fridge, like in their ways of trying to raise funds or whatever. And it's an atrocity almost to kind of depict it that way because all of these communities are actively being abandoned. Yeah, being abandoned in a nice way. They didn't wake up one morning and didn't have food in their fridge. Right. And they don't have food in their fridge because of a policy that preserves that status. Right. And so that is the mutual aid that we run. We had a community center for five years where we hosted weekly events or daily events every evening. All the events would be under that umbrella of learning as a community about these injustices. And they could also be, you know, shows and they could be debates and they could be lectures or workshops and all of the proceeds would go to our food security program. And in that way we are 100% community funded. No one has salaries. We made a conscious decision back in the beginning when we realized all the injustices around us that we didn't want to institutionalize and become part of a system that is responsible for that. And that is not to say that NGOs aren't amazing. That is not to say that, you know, there aren't NGOs doing God's work here. But they're constrained. Yeah. There's different constraints. Yeah. And this is our personal decision to act as a community. There's another reason we didn't want to institutionalize it is because we don't want to make a business out of something that shouldn't be needed. You know what I mean? When you get salaries intact and you get like... It perpetuates the need to continue. In a way. There's always going to be need, right? It's not like we're going to... Oh, and then they're not going to need anymore. But I saw on Hinge, it's like a dating app. Yeah. It said an app meant to be deleted. And I just thought about that. Oh my God. That is the essence of it all. We're not supposed to be doing this. I mean, we should be caring for our community and our neighbors. That should go without saying. But also our taxes should be directed to serving our neighbors that are in vulnerable states. So I will definitely link in the show notes to like the Instagram and things like that. And for people who are... I mean, I'm sure for some people who have seen the documentary No Other Land, this is the same community that you all work with in Masafari Ata. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm interested in a couple of different kind of directions. But would you say that a lot of the people who come to culture of solidarity and like volunteer and start to participate in your activities, do you think that that opens up the space to not only question injustices within the Israeli system, but how that's tied up with the occupation? Like is that kind of the path forward for people? I think that is the path forward that we want for people. I think we are very forgiving in a sense in the way that like, not forgiving, but just understanding, you know, the journey that it took us to unlearn what we know. Like that's a hard one. And I'm going to go pre-October 7th, you know, you're doing work to unlearn what you've been taught is your entire identity. And you know, post-October 7th, you just see everything, like everything has become so much more pornographic. You know, it's the amount of death, murder, the genocide, the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. You know, just this week, six communities have been pushed out of their homes by the army, by settlers, terrorists, and it's become much more immediate. Whereas I think before October 7th, I mean, there didn't go a week in which we didn't have an event talking about the occupation and learning. But I think after October 7th, it became this like huge divide of like this kind of like protection over one's identity. So we did a lot of work to kind of dismantle that notion that to empathize with another people comes on the expense of your own pain and trying to, you know, mirror the power dynamic to people. Like, yes, we all had family and friends and people that we knew that were murdered, that were taken, that were like abducted. And with that being said, Israel has been committing a genocide in Gaza for the past, still it's ongoing, two and something years. The other day I got a message on our Instagram basically being like, I love the work you do, you do really important things. And you know, there is racism and there is poverty. But from there to say that there's ethnic cleansing, come on. Like, I don't know if I can support your work anymore. And basically also meet that with love as well to be like, I hear you, this is the policies that people in our government are advancing. This is who our army is protecting. This is what ethnic cleansing means. And in that situation, I can also turn to my community and my friends. Like, I have a friend that what he does for work is kind of gathering all this information of articles and everything that's coming out to educate. So, all right, cool. I can use those articles to help teach this person that yes, there is in fact ethnic cleansing happening in the West Bank. Like, and you know, it's not even like this, like, oh, how do I say it's like, no, actually are like our government officials are saying this. Like, Smotley said it the other day. Right. So, yeah. But yeah, it is this kind of like open door. Yeah. For Israelis that maybe not, they're not there yet also. Yeah, I think that it's like, it's, it's hard. It's like really hard because you're at this point where it's like very far from where those people are that are like beginning. And also you have sometimes resentment towards your society and most of the time, a lot of the time you have, I mean, I'm always as a nothing with like in general when someone wants to is asking a question. I think that is just like amazing and important and cool. Let's have a conversation about this. At least they're asking. Yeah. And they're wanting to learn they're questioning something. That's the way forward. And with that being said, you know, the past two and a half years have also been excruciating living in this society. Like you're living in a genocidal society and you're around people that could justify certain, you know, acts, certain war crimes. Yeah, you kind of find yourself not wanting to engage, not wanting to love, not wanting to teach, not wanting not that I'm the one teaching like we're all learning together about this and hosting. And so you're not wanting to have conversations sometimes because you just like, well, you see what's been happening online over the past two years and you still can't comprehend what is going on. And I don't know what I can do to help that. But then I have to remind myself that if I am here, if I'm living here, I have a responsibility. And that is to, yeah, facilitate more meetings, conversations in which people will be exposed to the injustices being committed in our name. And that's a problem with liberal Zionism as well, because liberal Zionists will be like, oh my God, yeah, it's terrible. What's happening in the West Bank? That's it. extremely rich in thought provoking content. I want to ask what kind of organizations does culture of solidarity engage with, whether in Israel and in Palestine, and kind of related to that? What role do you see an organization such as this, a mutual aid organization? What role do you envision for yourselves in Palestinian liberation? What role are you intending to play? You kind of touched on it already in terms of teaching and learning within your own society. We work with a lot of different organizations because it is very important for us to not reinvent the wheel and kind of learn with our other organizations, whether it's Gisha who talk about the actual words of Gisha's access, and they talk about access in Gaza, the access to water, to electricity, the infrastructure in Gaza. And then we could host tours. Every time it's a different organization, this guy Mani in our group, he runs these tours and he will do with breaking the silence in Masafiri Yata. He'll do one with the Zochot, which I'm sure, yeah, you can probably link all of these in the... Definitely will, yeah. So, I was in Munchiah, which is the Charles-Claire Munchiah, which is literally down the street from where I'm at right now, and it's the beach of Yaffa in the village that once existed there. Or even with a woman named Hilah Arrel to go through a tour within the half-abandoned Israeli bus, the new bus station. And they're all tied to injustices. They're all tied to something that was there and isn't anymore, or atrocities currently happening. Obviously, I was in the negative to learn about the different Bedouin communities and the injustices that they're experiencing. And then, so that's, yeah, it's called touring and solidarity. And then we'll have, I mean, honestly, probably any left, radical left, or an organization that you could probably think of, we collaborate with them in some way or another. It's a pretty tight-knit community. This has been a beautiful thing of trying to, you know, there's always a knits and grits of blah, blah, blah, but, I mean, uplifting each other and collaborating with each other is so important to not feel alone as Israelis against the occupation and for an actual true democracy in the land or liberation. Yeah. Do you work with Palestinian groups within Israel and in the occupied territories? Yes, we do. We worked with an organization in Gaza called Dignity for Palestine, and we did a big flower fundraiser last year. And we've worked with organizations that are like, you know, Physicians for Human Rights that are both, you know, Israeli and Palestinian-led. And then we have our annual Ramadan campaign that I was telling you about now, and that's with rabbis for human rights who are not Palestinian, but we do work with different groups within Palestine. One of the people that was, you know, the main receiver and distributor of these boxes was Oda Dereen, who was murdered in July by settler Yunan Levy. So yeah, it's working directly with communities. Second question, what role do leftists Israelis have right now? Was that the question? Yeah, like what role do you envision either for yourself as you personally or for the Israeli left in Palestinian liberation? I know it's a big question. That is a big question. It's an important question. And I think as long as we are living on this land, it's our response. It's, I mean, I mean, I think it's everyone's responsibility to free Palestine and for the Palestinian people to have equal rights, to have access to whatever they wish for under, yeah, a government that sees both counterparts equally and the obviously accountability and reparations that would need to happen in order to get there. I think that our responsibility as Israeli leftists to keep fighting for that is to keep fighting for that within Israel and within Palestine. So whether it's protective presence in the West Bank, protective presence is a kind of program where you sleep at different Palestinian homes every night, just in case settlers come in the middle of the night to attack or the army comes in the middle of the night to attack and you're there serving as protective presence. You obviously have a privilege. You have an Israeli passport. You're Jewish. That is a privilege on this land. And to be there, you know, obviously you don't decide what goes down. You ask each family how they want to deal with this. And you serve that. So I think protective presence is one of the most important things Israelis, Israeli leftists can do because, yeah, like I said earlier, it's just getting worse and worse and it's at a high. It's always been bad. But the past, honestly, I think since no other land came out, it, I think... It's like gotten a lot of attention on them, essentially. Well, there's always been attacks by settlers. Of course, yeah. But I think that, yeah, in the past year, it's gone to an all-time high. Well, there's also kind of like the general impunity that the Israeli government and the settler movement, like... Exactly. It's not, yeah. Especially after Biden left, like not that he was holding them accountable, but... Yeah, of course. Certainly gloves were off after that. For sure. No, no, exactly. That is very true. But basically in the last year, two years, it's gotten much, much worse. So I think Israeli leftists have a responsibility to be served as protective presence for one, number one. I think number two, they have a responsibility to educate their society and to not only educate, but to constantly learn. I feel like so many people in Israel are in just like this constant victimhood of like the whole world is against us. Like everyone's anti-Semitic, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like from that to what actually... I mean, obviously there's anti-Semitism. Obviously there are people not saying that there isn't, of course, but without any accountability for what we have turned our backs to over the past two and a half years, like there is so much work to be done. And I think, you know, the easy way, whether it's a Western or a broad telling you, like, well, why do you live in Palestine? You should leave, blah, blah, blah, or whether it's a Palestinian in the West Bank being like, you can't leave. Like you have... We need you here. Obviously it's an unnatural ecosystem to have, you know, leftist activists running through villages in the West. I mean, but that's the reality of things. So as long as I am here living on this land and where I'm from, I'm going to do everything in my power to resist what is happening and to learn together with other people. It's hard because we're not a really tiny community. Like, you know, there's people that, again, are against, you know, all the war, blah, blah, blah, like, but yeah, but not seeing how that is like interconnected with the entire premise of the state. There's a lot of work to be done and it's hard because you're also bitter, like, you know, and you want to have compassion for them, you're bitter. And I'm like, ah, you're like, you've made so much work for us. Yeah. I mean, also, I get it. I've been there. I wasn't raised in a left home. I know what it is to be raised up conservative right wing, you know, Zionist. And I'm obviously very far from that, but I know what it's like to have to leave everything you've been raised on and know what it's like to have family not want to talk to you. I know what it's like to have friends not want to be friends with you anymore, to have so many people around you telling you that you're wrong, but you know that this is the right thing to do. And I get that and I have compassion for that. But then there's also just like, sometimes you're just like, yeah. No, I can't, I can't imagine. I mean, it's a, it's a very difficult journey to travel through. I understand the sentiment that you've expressed that like the last two years should have been enough. Yeah. But also it's like this whole identity is fragile and people are human beings. And like it's difficult for them to like, yeah, I'm not saying anything new. Just reiterating what you said about like unlearning, like it's, it's an extremely difficult thing to go through, I think. Yeah. But do you understand, like, you know, you're Palestinian and like me complaining about this thing that we're doing, like it just feels like people know what's been going on, but on Palestinians that have family, friends that are subjected to this violence and that are themselves subjected to that violence abroad because of being Palestinian. And then what is happening here? It's like two different worlds. Yeah. And it's funny for me to even like, like, oh, yeah, like to even try to explain that because I'm sure people will be listening to this and be like, oh, like, you know, why are they complaining? Like, but then you know your society and you know what they have or haven't been exposed to, and you know what they've chosen not to look at, to not, not necessarily at this point, what they have or haven't been exposed because I think that's also a bit of a kind of forgiving card. Because I think at this point, you still call it AI. If you still call it like, there's some deep reckoning to do there. Yeah. But anyways, I just feel like it's such, yeah, two different worlds. And I think that I think as Israeli leftists that live here, you know, pay taxes in this land, we have a huge responsibility if not the number one responsibility to Palestinian liberation. And yeah, I think that's the very long answer to your question. No, no, I mean, I think it's, yeah, it's a fair answer. I, I just, you know, think to myself that like, it's not coincidence. And it's not to take away from the agency of like individuals. Obviously, everybody has choices to make, like Israelis have choices to make. They can choose to believe or not believe or they can choose to turn their back. But at the same time, it's like systems have led them to a point where they dehumanize to this extent that they can see the videos and either make excuses or pretend they're not real, you know? And so it's like the work is to disrupt the systems. You know, I think in that way, I think about like structural constraints. That is more worthwhile in my effort. If I was in Israel, I love the Stamina. But if I was in your shoes, like that's more worthwhile in my effort than to be like kind of demoralized by individuals. If you know, if you understand what I mean. I guess that kind of leads me to my next question. I mean, I know that October 7th was such kind of like a breaking point. But obviously the Israeli left like was in the minority before as well. But what would you say kind of like in the last two years and kind of to think about moving forward, what are the biggest challenges that the Israeli left faces to continue in its effort, whether it's to educate or to be a type of protective presence, whether physically in the West Bank or in their presence in Israel? Well, obviously it's our, you know, fascist government and fascist society. You know, anyone that is like actively oppressing every minority on this land, and especially Palestinians. So I think our biggest threat is our government at the moment. But I think that our biggest, my biggest threat, if I could think of like, what is the biggest threat is apathy, I think, like people not caring, people not getting up and leaving their houses and doing things and organizing and mobilizing, just letting this happen. And I think on paper, the biggest obstacle would probably be our government that are, you know, acting in such a fascist, fanatic Nazi manner. And I think, yeah, as an individual being a part of grassroots communities and seeing, you know, at the end of the day, there are people that are going out there and actively murdering Palestinians that are, you know, pushing for policies to deport children, Filipino children or children of migrant workers. There are so many injustices towards different people. And there are people that are like actively going out and fighting for these like terrible, terrible fanatic ideologies. And I think whenever we, people don't. I said this in a podcast recently and someone told me like, wait, you have to take out that part because it sounds like you're like voting, like you're like grouting for the fascists to act it like, no, no, no. The fact is that there are people that are doing these really, really bad things. And when we're not countering them, when we are just letting them happen and be like, oh, yeah, that sucks, but not doing anything about it, not using our privilege or voice or microphone to resist that, then we're conforming with it. And I know that's not fun to think that's not fun. It's not fun to like go or organize protests. It's not fun to do a lot. Even though actually there's a lot of things that are really beautiful as well. Being in the West Bank, being with people, playing with children, like these are beautiful, beautiful things. It's not like we're doing that. But I think when it's with the Israeli society, when it's organizing protests, when it's joining a protest as a number, when it's, you know, learning and doing and learning, it's not always easy. And it's not always someone's first, yeah, decision to make. But I think that when you don't do that, I think that is the biggest threat. You know, in the Holocaust, in many different atrocities over the years, the thing that like stood out most was people that were silent and people that didn't resist in one way or another. Like that movie, Zone of Interest, like. Oh my God, that movie. That movie just shaped these past two and a half years. Like I saw it a few months after October 7th and I just every moment that life just existed in Israel and you saw warplanes flying above you. And you know what's going to happen. You hear too. Like you hear bombs falling, you hear and everyone's just like gotten used to it. And you're just like we're living in Zone of Interest. Yeah, that's wild. Yeah, I think it's like a constant question of. Do I want to be a part of the society? Do I want to fight? Life would be much easier if I moved away and I was just like fuck this place, which is not a bad thing to do. I have many friends that have done this and I understand it. It's really hard. You know, life would be easier if I just left. It's not the I don't want to say it's not the sexy narrative to be like like, look, we can both, you know, look, you know, it's not fun to be talking and trying to reason with fascists, like or people that are in deep denial of a reality you're really well intertwined with. But I think it's my moral responsibility as an Israeli to be here and as long as I can and help create platforms for our society to learn and resist. Yeah, no, I think, like you said, there are different pathways, but I can definitely understand like the feeling you have that it's like an application of responsibility having been a part of the society to some degree to, yeah, throw your hands essentially. One last question. I was watching the documentary, Coexistence My Ass, which is an incredible documentary. I really encourage people to watch it if they can. And it's filmed and it incorporates that moment of October 7th. And shows to I mean, I think implies that, of course, I I don't know how widely this applies, but it shows and implies how parts of the left fell off, you know, after October 7th. Do you feel like now we're 2026, we're recording February 22nd, 2026. Do you feel like people are starting to like come back? I don't know. Or did just the left get smaller? I think the radical left has become just much more tight knit. And yeah, whoever's a part of it is kind of a part of it. People are always welcome to join and be a part, but it's kind of, you know, you kind of have your usual suspects at this point. And I think the broader, like, I don't know, liberal Zionists that will call themselves left and Israel just like isn't really left because they're talking about a democracy within an apartheid state. They are, like I said earlier, sending their sons to war. I'm not saying that's an easy thing, but at the same time opposing the war and not acknowledging Palestinian suffering. And I think there's become many people. And this is from my personal experience that just are like, like I said, kind of like looking forward with their hands on the sides of each of their eyes, trying not to see what's happening. You know, there are people thousands, tens of thousands in the streets protesting, you know, they'll be waving Israeli flags. That's hard for me. I don't I don't feel like I'm in the group that would ever wave a flag. And I think they see themselves as left. Hmm. Yeah. Again, like I said, like you can't be fighting for human rights, liberal ideologies within an apartheid state. You can't fight for democracy in an apartheid state. Like we have to touch the root of this all. Every injustice happening on this land or in Israel in 48, like, in my opinion, the root of it is the occupation. We've planted roots on rotten soil. We've pushed people out of their homes and took them as our own. And we're not really willing to reconcile what we've become, what we've done. And I think only when that starts to happen, there could be some sort of future here on this land for both people. But as long as we're not acknowledging the atrocities we are committing and the atrocities or silence is allowing perpetuate, then the left here is very, very tiny. And I say that not to toot our own horn. You know, it's not in a way of like it's not we're not on a moral high ground. Like maybe there was a moment where I did feel that way in a sense of like, I know and you don't know or like, but then, you know, very quickly in order to turn your activism into something sustainable, you have to remind yourself, this is what I believe in. This is love and it's not from bitterness and it's not from being on a moral high ground. Like I'm doing this because I believe in it as me as Didi. And I really hope other people join and other people also open their hearts to these injustices and realize that in order for everyone to have a just reality or just future, then you have to fight for everyone to have those rights as well. Yeah, thank you so much for that. I always say like, I mean, I think this is applicable lots of places. I say it here in the United States, like when there was a crackdown on pro-Palestine protesters and just a complete reversal of freedom of speech and everything like that, because they happen to be pro-Palestine. I said, you know, this is eroding the tenuous democracy you have. It's democracy for all of us or none of us. And in Israel, it's like you can be liberal and or you can call yourself the left and advocate in this way. But unless, like you said, you realize what the construction of the state and its continuation kind of like this endless ethnic cleansing project that's happening in the territories is like, unless you address that, it will bleed into you. So it's, you know, for a variety of reasons, moral reasons, of course, but also self-interest. Dalia Shunlin has an interesting article about this and an interesting argument about this that I'll link in the show notes. And I would say she's a believer in maybe a confederation or something like that. But her analysis is the occupation ruined the potential of Israeli democracy. Like I said, she comes at it from a very kind of different angle, I think, than you do, but still is a reasonable argument at the end of it. But yeah, thank you so much, Danielle. This has been a really rich conversation. And I think that the listeners will benefit a lot from having this this laid out. And of course, I'll include everything in the show notes about the groups that we mentioned. Thank you so much for inviting me here and I hope I didn't tuck your head off. No, not at all. This is great. Thank you so much. Stop paying to invest with free trade. You can invest without the legacy fees with a free isa, a free pension and commission free investing in funds, stocks, ETFs, bonds and more. Join over 1.6 million users on free trades award winning free platform. Go to free trade dot IO slash radio to get started. Capital at risk, isa and SIP rules apply. Other charges may apply. The fucking. This is it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis reporting from the New York State Capitol. In the early, early morning of Wednesday, February 25th, I rode on a bus from the snowy streets of the financial district in Lower Manhattan up to Albany, the New York State Capitol. The bus arrived at the Armory Arena shortly before 10 a.m. Inside, there was coffee and breakfast, signs and posters, tax the rich embroidered beanies and over a thousand New Yorkers gathered to tell Kathy Hockel and the New York State Legislature that it's time to tax the rich. After recovering from the morning bus ride, a rally was held in the Armory Arena hosted by New York City Councilman Chi Ose. With speakers from local unions like the Nurses Association, 1099 SCIU, the Taxi Workers Alliance, immigrant justice organizations, childcare, housing and education advocates, as well as the co-chair of the New York City DSA. Following the speeches, the crowd practiced chants and protest songs ahead of the march to the Capitol. The rally at the Armory just wrapped up now a thousand or so people are marching on Washington towards the State Capitol building in Albany. The crowd is now in front of the legislative building. There's some New York taxi cabs honking outside the New York DSA marching band. It is 12.30 and the crowd is now approaching the New York State Capitol building. The crowd is stretching halfway around the square in front of all these government buildings and still marching forward. I'm about to enter the State Capitol building after about a 25, 30 minute march and some chanting outside. A steady stream of people are now flowing into the Capitol. You guys are going to have to exit. We cannot take any more. Okay, I have made it inside the Capitol building, barely the last person admitted in the top security section by the main entrance. But now I'm down at the lower level, the concourse. And as you can hear, a massive crowd is approaching the security gate in the lower concourse, taking up the entirety of that corridor and just now have entered the security gate area of the Capitol. We'll return to Socialist January 6th later this episode, but first some context on why this protest is happening and what it's hoping to achieve. On January 1st, Democratic Socialist Zoran Mamdani was sworn in as mayor of New York City. But you don't magically get your social democracy paradise once a new mayor is sworn in. Getting elected and taking power is just the first step. Governor Hockel has been resistant to raising taxes and Zoran has said he's open to other funding avenues. But that a small tax increase on the wealthiest New Yorkers and corporations would be the fairest method of funding his agenda. Since taking office, Mayor Mamdani has decided to focus on governing and fostering a working relationship with Kathy Hockel rather than directing energy towards another uphill electoral battle that would create a purely adversarial relationship between the mayor and the governor, making any concessions much more difficult in the interim. But external pressure still must be applied to Governor Hockel in order to secure the funding for the Mamdani mandate that voters delivered in the 2025 election. So rather than discarding the grassroots organizing apparatus that got Mamdani elected after the election, that apparatus and its network of volunteers spun off into a new organization called Our Time, which in coordination with the New York City DSA organizes door-to-door canvassing, phone banking, community events and rallies to win an affordable New York City and help enact Mamdani's policy agenda. Achieving Mamdani's campaign promises was already going to be a tall task. But then early into the new administration, the mayor's office and comptroller discovered the city was facing an unexpected financial crisis in the form of a $12 billion deficit left by former Mayor Eric Adams. This budget crisis was due to years of financial mismanagement and the underbudgeting of essential services like rental and cash assistance, shelters, health insurance and special education. While in office, Eric Adams covered up this massive budget deficit, leaving the gaps grossly understated, gaps that were made worse by divestment in New York City by the state under former Governor Andrew Cuomo. Since the financial crisis of the 70s, the New York City mayor has been required by law to have a balanced budget. So rather than sweeping this under the rug by continuing to cook the city's books like his predecessor, Zoran chose complete transparency about the crisis he has inherited and how his administration will attempt to solve it. Zoran signed an executive order to designate chief savings officers in every city agency to quote, streamline processes and eliminate waste, unquote. Through his relationship with Governor Kathy Hockel, the mayor secured $1.5 billion in state aid last month. That money, combined with higher than expected Wall Street revenues, new savings measures and eliminating inefficiencies and bureaucratic waste, have shrunk the deficit to 5.5 billion. Still a painful gap to fill. In the preliminary budget unveiled February 17th, the mayor laid out two paths to close this gap. The first is a 2% income tax increase on New Yorkers making over a million dollars a year, as well as a tax on the most profitable corporations. If that doesn't happen, the city will be forced to use the limited tools at its disposal by raiding the rainy day fund and raising city property tax by 9.5%. Mayor Mamdani says this second option is one of last resort, as the property tax is the only mechanism for revenue the city has complete control of. The preliminary budget has faced criticism for falling short of promises to increase funding to parks and libraries. The library budget is 0.11% less than Mamdani campaigned on, and the park budget remains flat rather than boosting it to 1% of the total budget as hoped, though this is still preliminary and subject to change. This budget does contain $500 million for new programmatic spending, including new funding for shelter services, mental health care and the emergency food program, and cancels an Eric Adams plan to add 5,000 more NYPD officers, though as promised, their budget remains effectively the same. Mayor Mamdani says that funding for his proposed Department of Community Safety will be covered in the executive budget later this April. A number of Mamdani's key policies don't relate to the city budget, for example, making buses free will require deals with the state and the MTA, but Mamdani just appointed six new people to the rent guidelines board, making a rent freeze more likely. In his second week in office, Mamdani announced a partnership with the governor to provide universal childcare for kids under five in New York State and in New York City, expand Pre-K, the free 3K program, and free childcare for two-year-olds, which the state will fully fund for the first two years. On top of the city budget crisis, the tax-the-rich protests are also in the backdrop of Trump's tax cuts and the dismantling of the social safety net. Calls to tax the rich or calls to fund local services and whether the massive cuts to SNAP food stamps and Medicaid in Trump's one big beautiful bill. The tax-the-rich campaign writes, quote, if we don't tax the rich, millions of New Yorkers will lose health care or go hungry. New York can afford to stand up to Trump's agenda, unquote. At the Albany Rally, city councilman Chi Ose spoke about how New York State has over 100 billionaires and New York actually gained 13,000 millionaires in 2024 alone. This fight to tax the rich is a fight that the unions are united on, as demonstrated by the attendees and representatives present at the Albany Rally. Many of the Internet's residents, SCIU, the Federal Unionist Network, the Doctors' Council, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, New Yorkers United for Child Care, the Alliance for Quality Education, the New York Working Families Party, but we really appreciate you here and with a coalition this strong, make no mistake. We are going to overcome the political power of the billionaire class. And we are going to tax the rich for New York we can afford. This coalition went up to Albany pushing for a handful of bills currently under consideration. The first is a progressive state income tax bill, which will create new tax brackets starting at $1 million, so that as people earn millions more dollars in income, they pay a slightly higher share in taxes. This would raise an estimated $21 billion annually. The second bill is called the Fair Share Act, which seeks to address how New York City essentially charges a flat income tax if you earn $50,000 or $5 million, where you pay practically the same rate of roughly 3.9%. The Fair Share Act seeks to add a 2% surcharge to those with incomes of over $1 million per year, which would raise about $4 billion annually. The third bill is a tax on the most profitable corporations, a corporate tax bill ensuring companies doing business in New York State with over $2.5 million in profits pay what they owe in taxes. This proposal would raise $7 billion annually. And finally, a bill which could be funded by some of the former tax bills is the Universal Child Care Act, which would ensure free year-round full-day child care without means testing and guarantee that all child care workers are paid a genuine living wage. As of now, 22 New York City Council people have signed on to tax the rich by supporting the Fair Share Act. Only four more Council people are needed to reach a majority. So with that context, let's return to the Albany protest, both outside and inside the New York Capitol building. I was the last person to be allowed into the Capitol building. There is hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of people outside now trying to get in to tell the politicians, representatives and the governor that they want to tax the rich. I am in the lower concourse of the Capitol building, barely getting through security on the top floor, because there are so many people, not because I was inherently dangerous. But now a large, large group of people are coming in via the lower concourse about to reach the main security gate at the lower level. Looks like a few hundred down this corridor about to enter the Capitol, holding signs, taking up the entire, entire passageway. It's the Cooney Group. It is the public university union that has appeared. Later that day, I interviewed someone with PSC, the Cooney Staff Union. I'm Liz Stevenson. I am an academic advisor at City Tech, which means I'm a member of the PSC-CUNY Union. Why is a PSC here in Albany today? So PSC, I'm on the legislative committee of the PSC, and many folks from our committee as well as other PSC members have come to Albany because we really want to see fair taxation in New York State. Right now, a lot of millionaires and billionaires are not paying their fair share, especially as a result of Trump's tax cuts. And that means that we're not seeing the services we need. And certainly at CUNY, we're not seeing the funding that we need to make our schools, quality schools, with safe and healthy facilities. Students are not getting the services that they need. Class sizes are large. So we want to see more full-time faculty. We want to see more academic advisors. We want to see more mental health counselors. And just generally, we want to see better facilities for CUNY. And we know that the only way that we can get the funding that we need for many services, including CUNY, is by taxing the rich. We really need to raise revenue in the state. So there's the three tax bills, the income, the corporate, and the New York City specific one. But on the PSC flyers, it's also another bill or act that is being pushed for specifically to help CUNY get more funding. Could you talk about that aspect of the fight here? Sure. A little-known former state legislator named Zoran Mamdani wrote this bill called the Repair Act. And what the Repair Act would do is allow the state to collect property taxes from NYU and Colombia and then use that money to fund public higher education like CUNY. So right now, you know, as technically as nonprofits, NYU and Colombia do not pay any property tax. In many places around the country, there are similar institutions that still make what we call pilots, so payments in lieu of taxes. NYU and Colombia don't even do that. So it would take a constitutional amendment at the state level to require them to pay property taxes. And that's what the Repair Act would allow us to do. It would have to go through multiple legislatures in order to get a constitutional amendment that would require them to pay property taxes. That's another way to raise revenue for CUNY. Liz also told me that PSC is fighting for a quote unquote new deal for CUNY because for the past few decades there's been divestment in public higher education across the country and especially in New York under Cuomo, CUNY suffered from defunding and is now currently suffering from chronic understaffing and facilities in decay, all while student enrollment has increased. Teachers have resigned or retired and not been replaced. And so PSC is fighting for a renewed investment to hire more full-time staff and repair and maintain facilities to improve not just their working conditions but their students learning conditions. A part of the new deal for CUNY is also fighting for the first 60 credits to be free for all students. Once the crowd outside managed to find a way to enter the capital through the alternative entrances, groups split off to march around the interior perimeter while others lobbied legislators. Lunch was set up on the third floor after a quick bite even more people dispersed through the capital complex to hand out flyers to legislators and their staff while small groups lobbied door to door in the legislative office building and organizers attended private meetings. The action was timed to catch politicians and capital staff while they were on their own lunch break as they walked around the Empire State Plaza and eventually back to the chambers by early afternoon. As a grand finale hundreds of people packed the corridor from the legislative offices to the assembly and senate lining both sides of the hallway with chanting union members and organizers handing flyers to politicians and staff who hurried through the corridor. Supportive assembly members cheered on the protest as they walked through the tunnel. That is the current state of the tax the rich corridor. Are you on? Around 3pm the crowd left the corridor boarded buses outside the capital complex and rode back to New York City just in time to catch the sunset. Meanwhile at a press conference on pre-K and 3K enrollment Mayor Zoran Mamdani was asked about his absence from the Albany tax the rich rally. Hey Mayor how you doing? There's a tax the rich rally today in Albany you're not there obviously even though taxing the rich has been one of your consistent calls to raise revenue for the city so I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about why you decided not to be there were you worried about working the governor on this issue and secondly do you think it disappoints people in this movement that you've called for that but you're you're not necessarily at this rally. So I make it clear time and time again that I believe in the importance of taxing the wealthiest New Yorkers that little bit more as well as the most profitable corporations and doing so while also ending the drain that has long characterized our city's fiscal relationship with the state and I've said this both because it's important to create a fairer tax system and also because of the fact that we're facing a 5.4 billion dollar fiscal deficit at this time the likes of which we haven't seen since the Great Recession and my not attending one event does not change in any way the strength with which I believe this the urgency with which I believe we have to respond to it and I'm thankful for New Yorkers who continue to make it clear that they too want to build a city that everyone who calls at home can afford. The governor and I are in constant communication and we are always looking to build a healthier stronger city. I'm appreciative of our partnership in that and I know we have a long budget process to go through and I'm encouraged by the beginnings of it. Rally attendance was lower than organizers hoped. The early morning start and blizzard a few days prior likely affected turnout though as already discussed many unions did sign on to the action and send representative members organizing on a grand scale right after what's perceived as a huge victory like winning an election can actually be difficult even for a group like our time that's working to use the organizing apparatus that got mom Donnie elected to help enact his policy agenda not as many people will be keen on canvassing right after spending six months canvassing for an election even if the election was a victory. Our time aimed to send 25,000 tax the rich letters to state legislators by the end of January. But as of now the website lists under 7,000 letters sent. But the Albany takeover protest was just the opening act. The state budget is set to be finalized by March 31st and there will be tax the rich events across the state leading up to the end of the month. This next week and a half New York City DSA and our time will host a week of action or a week of tax shin to increase pressure on the legislature and the governor as they head into budget negotiations proving the diversity of this coalition. Confusingly there are two different time spans listed for the week of action across the social media and org websites March 5th through the 10th or March 7th through the 14th. But regardless between the 5th and the 14th there are organized actions happening across the five boroughs and statewide in Buffalo, Hudson Valley, Ithaca, Rochester, Sarah Cruz and Westchester. There will be door knocking, phone banking, collecting petition signatures and a kickoff happy hour social at Solas in the East Village on Thursday, March 5th. To quote from our time quote what happens in Albany this winter will shape Zoran's first year in office and determine whether working families get the relief they need. We have until March to build enough pressure to win a state budget that funds free child care, backfills the cuts and secures resources to do so much more unquote. Beyond running the biggest city in the country as a secondary goal, Mamdani seeks to provide an example that left wing politicians can responsibly govern and that left wing policies can make people's lives better and more affordable. And New Yorkers are organizing to make that example as strong as it can be. Hi everyone and welcome to the show. I'm joined today by Gordayine who's a journalist from Kurdistan who's based in Germany and we're going to discuss the bombing of Iran. How are you Gordayine? Hello, thank you again for inviting me and yeah I'm ready to talk about what's happening in Iran right now. Yeah, it's a lot, a lot is happening. I mean we should begin I suppose by if someone happens to have been avoiding the news and has somehow managed to avoid learning what is happening. Can we give like a small summary of the events that have happened since Friday night US time? So yeah, it was early morning around eight, nine in the morning in Iran time that the Israeli army attacked the center of Tehran where Ali Khamenei's house which is known as Bayt Tehrah Bari, the leader's house was located and apparently the Iranian officials were having a very important meeting there and following that there were more attacks across Tehran and other cities and by night as the attacks were going on, as the strikes were going on, Benjamin Netanyahu came on TV and he said that I have some news, I have some information that confirms that Ali Khamenei is dead which caused a lot of panic and excitement among the people and everybody was really excited and they were waiting for this to be confirmed and then some people came out and said no it's not true but after some hours the Iranian state media, the TV channels all started confirming that. So following that the attacks did not stop, they were still going on and then the American army also joined. This is a completely coordinated cooperation between US and Israel so as they were attacking different IRGC bases and the facilities belonging to the government, the Iranian government started attacking the neighboring countries, they attacked UAE, they attacked Qatar, they attacked Bahrain, they attacked Iraq and they attacked also Iraqi Kurdistan region and they were just mainly targeting the US bases or facilities belonging to the US but soon after they started attacking civilian buildings like hotels, just randomly attacking different directions and at the same time they also started sending missiles and drones towards Israel which majority of them were intercepted so they've been attacking these neighboring countries since the beginning of this war and they have been specifically targeting Iraqi Kurdistan because first the US has a lot of big military bases there in Iraq and Iraq and Kurdistan region and at the same time there are the Kurdish parties from Iran who are based there and the regime has been seeing them as one of the major threats since the Cate so since the beginning of this whole war they have been targeting these Kurdish parties a lot and they also attacked, there is a refugee base that the families of the Kurdish forces basically leave there, they also attacked there but luckily nobody was killed or injured but some buildings were damaged and they attacked airbill with drones and missiles several times which were all mainly intercepted by the US air defense systems because of the remaining of the missiles and the drones that were falling down from the sky some people were lightly injured or some buildings were damaged but still it's a crazy thing to see because previously in the past years Iran had attacked airbill several times and also other regions but the US or the other countries that were there they didn't really intercepted the drones or the missiles, there's also something new that we're seeing it's also important to know that Iran has also attacked Cyprus like British military bases were targeted there but the drones or the missiles were sent from Lebanon. What's going on right now is a full scare war and I think when you look at it it's nothing like what we've seen before if you want to compare it to what happened in Iraq the US invasion this is completely different I think it's even larger than that because Iran is a very big country and there are hundreds or maybe thousands of points across the country that have been targeted with heavy bombings inside Tehran around Tehran it's also really incredible to know because the amount of intel that you need for this is also really a lot I've seen videos I've seen footage I've seen reports that some random checkpoints on some remote places especially in Kurdistan were targeted so this is also something that shows that how really coordinated and well planned this attack and this war is I want to jump into something because a lot of people are mainly focused on these major attacks major developments like yeah they're attacking Dubai they're attacking Doha these are all happening and of course the civilians they're also in danger I think somebody in Doha was killed in the first day it was just a civilian that was killed by the remains of a missile or a drone and this has made things really hard for the people on the ground many people are trapped in the airports on the borders so this this is something that's happening to the people outside of Iran but inside Iran there is massive bombings everywhere wherever the the IRGC or the intelligence service has a facility yeah and at the same time the regime has cut off the internet even the normal phone lines barely work and it's just so hard and almost impossible to get really precise information about what's happening in the cities and the towns around just like the what happened in the early January like during the protests only a few people have access to the internet and it's very limited yeah they share some videos with channels and like with news agencies but it's very limited for example in my hometown today some of the major IRGC bases and intelligence facilities that were some of the most important ones in western side of Iran or as we call it Iranian Kurdistan or Rojhelat they were all bombed and I've been trying to contact people to see what happened exactly I'm sure that there are civilians killed because the regime also has put all these bases inside the cities near parks near hospitals near schools near just random houses in the city so a lot of people are possibly killed but we don't know how many who are they so this is this is also like not just in my city in other cities too it's the same this is also something that a lot of people are not talking about but again this is war and the the bombings are so heavy and they're all being carried out with really advanced weapons and it's just so hard and when I talk to the people outside of Iran the people in Europe like some of my friends relatives everybody's worried that what if one of my relatives what if one of my friends gets get killed randomly on the street but because of this that people are seeing this also on the news at least I know this from my family because I was able to talk to them two nights ago everybody's staying home they have enough food for a few weeks and they're just watching the news they don't go out yeah they're just trying to stay safe but at the same time in major cities like for me for example the people who have a house outside of the city or in a village or if they have relatives outside of the city they have moved out because it's it's it's generally safer there are not many IRGC bases or like government government buildings or whatever in the villages and smaller towns so this is also happening and people are trying to stay safe as much as possible and yeah this is this is something that's going on and at the same time when I talk to the people I mean I haven't been able to properly talk to anyone because the internet is really bad but like I talked to my family and they told me that the the food prices are really really really high and it's really hard to buy food now because everybody's panicking and there are shortages like there's some items cannot be found some like essential items like I don't know oil meat and rice and things like that it's it's it's too hard to find in the market yeah and a lot of people are going to the to the gas stations to get some gas and to be prepared if something happens but uh yeah so this is also something that's going on and people are worried about that what if it's it's gonna get bigger if it's gonna scale it so like how are they gonna deal with with all these shortages yeah there is one more topic that I want to talk about I also wrote about it a little bit earlier I I published some text it's the topic of ordinary soldiers yeah explain that to people the civilians who are forced into the military service this is also like a very sensitive topic because there are probably thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of young men who are about 18 years old that are forced into the military service because it's mandatory in Iran and they are forced into the service and they are also in these military bases and the military bases are being targeted non-stop and there is a possibility I mean not the possibility of course it's surreal today one person a young man from Kurdistan was confirmed that he was killed but I'm sure that there are more because we don't have a proper internet connection so we cannot like get all the information but these military bases are being also targeted and of course I think a lot of them might get killed or injured and just from my own family one of my cousins who is 24 he was also forced into this because he wanted to open a business and like in Iran a lot of people also maybe I should give a little bit of context like in Iran if you want to open a business if you want to have a passport or things like that you have to serve in the army and we'll give you that so yeah he was he just he was listed like I don't know about five months ago or so and then he was in a military base between Tabriz and Urmia and their base was targeted luckily the sleeping quarters were not targeted it was just where the commanders were I think staying and yeah I mean I couldn't talk to him but he told my cousin who I called like two days ago he said that the moment they was bombed everybody just ran out and then everybody went back in and they they took all their belongings and backpacks and they just left the military base and they went home without telling the wiser or something and they were not they're not going to go back there anyways so this is also something that I am personally worried about all those young men who are forced to be in the military bases and they are absolutely not a part of the regime there are just civilians who are forced into this so that that's also something that I think it's it's not really discussed because the whole focus right now it's just on the major attacks which place was targeted or like which I don't know commander was killed or things like that. Yeah let's take a little break for advertisements and we'll come back because I'd like to discuss more of that like the structure of the Iranian state and who is and is not like part of it. Okay we are back so I think that will be a really good place for us to do some deep dives would be but people understand this part of the world through the lens of states because they understand the world through the lens of states because they have been raised in a state system but I don't think that it's particularly it's not useful to see everybody who lives in the Iranian state as part of the Iranian state it doesn't actually give us a good grasp on reality so perhaps you could first of all perhaps explaining the structures of the Iranian state when it comes to like there are pro regime militias right there there are the IRGC and then we have like the leadership many of whom are now dead some of whom we know some of whom we think are dead but then we also have and I know you and I have spoken about this before but it's worth explaining again right like Iran is the ethnically diverse country so we have people who are ethnically excluded from power we also have people within the majority ethnicity Persian people who are not pro regime so could you perhaps explain like like those structures that exist and then you and I spoke about this a little bit before we were recording but many of the facilities of the regime's armed forces and repressive forces are right in the middle of town right right next to civilian buildings so perhaps we could explain the consequences of that for civilians as bombs are falling on these facilities yeah so if I want to explain how the Iranian state system is I would simply compare it to a full monarchy but with a different label yeah there is king who owns all of the power and there are the people who are around him that also share some bits of power with him and there is the army that is in in full amount of the leader or the people around him so this is simply something like that if I want to make it very very simple but the Iranian state structure is actually quite complicated you know they follow some sort of religious hierarchy that the supreme leader is the representative of god on earth and he is leading the muslim nation until the imam Mahdi the savior of the world comes from the skies and saves the world and brings peace so this is what they actually believe so the supreme leader is actually the person who approves everything yeah there is normal parliament with the representative of the people but at the same time there is another type of religious parliament that decides on the interests of the regime which consists of some high level clerics or or the mullahs who are on a higher social level and at the same time there is also a council of 12 people six of them are mullahs six of them are like lawyers and jurists that they are monitoring the let's say the the whole political process in the government but whatever happens when you see that yeah this is on paper and theory this is a system that could possibly work but all of these organizations or these parts of the regimes or layers of the regime that I mentioned all of them they follow the supreme leader and whatever they do has to be approved by him yeah I mean I'm not talking about like I don't know the things that are decided in the city council or like very low level I'm talking about the about the national interests or things like that or who's going to be the next president for example but yeah basically that parliamentary system or those councillors are basically non-functional they're just there for a show and at the same time especially in the past decades the IRGC it's not only a military force that it's it's not a militia that follows the leader it's a whole organized and and complicated structure that owns the economy owns all the institutions in in Iran and controls all of them we're talking about the the oil sector we're talking about industry we're talking about agriculture I mean almost everything is owned by them and IRGC is a network of countless high-level commanders or even let's say non-military person that are they're all working together and they are running the country somehow and of course even if the leader is dead they still have some structures to to continue to carry carry on and this is how how the structure is in Iran and I think this is what makes Iran very very different from other states in in the Middle East and it's something that makes Iran also very different from what for example if you want to compare it to Saddam Hussein system or in in Libya or in Syria it's it's it's very different because the IRGC has put its hands and roots everywhere in every institution we're talking about schools we're talking about universities we're talking about hospitals we're talking about anything that you can imagine even in a post office like we were talking about this earlier so that there is like in every governmental institution from universities to schools and hospitals IRGC always has a specific office in in every facility it's supposed to recruit people to join the the resistance but in fact it's just a it's just an office to observe the people who are working there or the people who are going there for their daily matters so they have control over everything and that's what makes this regime very very structured and very hard to just topple in two nights so that's why they are still resisting they are still fighting back they are still even though Israel and America have destroyed majority of their military bases and facilities but they are still fighting back this is also important to understand I think yeah yeah and like with it being a little bit unclear like who is still alive especially in that top end of the pyramid right like we know Hamid Naid is dead or we know we're pretty sure he's dead Iran has announced he's dead yeah we know that other people within that religious leadership and political leadership structure are dead we know that they struck the assembly of experts today which could have removed a good number more of those religious leaders like like what they did in Venezuela was that they found somebody who was no less repressive but was amenable to doing what they wanted right specifically with resources specifically with oil you know we run the risk of a similar thing happening in Iran right of like someone within the IRGC being like we will do what you need us to do with oil as long as you allow us to continue murdering the Iranian people as much as we wish like that's a real worry they will find someone who they think they can do business with that that's what they wanted in Venezuela right Iran and Venezuela are different they are both allied but they're very different countries yeah but that's a real worry for people yeah I think it's also like with Venezuela it's it's it's completely different right now because with Venezuela America had like a clear person as you said that yeah he or she is going to be the the next leader or whatever yeah they'll see Rodriguez but with Iran it's not really clear yet you know the so-called prince uh Pahlavi he is he is always on tv always on on his social media saying that i'm gonna come back i'm gonna do this and that but it's not really clear if USA and America have made a deal with him because he doesn't really have that social base that he claims to have yeah and on the other side there are the ethnic groups especially Kurds Baluchis and the Arabs they're they're like better organized compared to other ethnic groups and then today we just saw that Trump has made phone calls with the Kurdish leaders of these parties and the other parties in in Iraqi Kurdistan this means something and so yeah it's it's not really clear that they're gonna have a similar plan like Venezuela or they're gonna have something completely different for for Iran we're just waiting to see what's going to to happen in the in the upcoming weeks because it's just a few days that the war is going on yeah the the entire region is in a shock it's it's it's still not clear that how people are gonna decide on on their future now because the war is still going on and it's on a very very high level yeah so of course it's it's also like even when I when I was talking to my family the other day they were telling me I mean most people in Kurdistan I would say majority of the people in Kurdistan they don't want monarchy back of course they they don't want another form of dictatorship and yeah they would say yeah we want anyone to be installed but not this guy not not this Reza Pahlavi we don't want him anyone is better than him yeah so this is also something and I think yeah probably if they want to install Reza Pahlavi the ethnic groups will not accept it and there is gonna be more resistance and therefore more wars yeah let's take another break and we'll talk a little bit about that maybe specifically the Kurdish situation as I know it's of interest to both of us all right we are back so yeah you mentioned this piece right there was an article it was a very poorly written article I will say for instance it seemed to think that Taliban and and Bahrzani were Iranian but nonetheless the central thrust of it was correct that that Trump has communicated with the KDP and the Puk I understand this is like a lot of acronyms coming at people and so maybe we can just say like political parties in Iraqi Kurdistan Southern Kurdistan but that doesn't necessarily tell us anything I think it's very easy again like there's this um American media frame of analysis which sees groups in the Middle East as monolithic right the Kurds as if they are like an entirely homogeneous entity with one political interest which is not the case but like for America to fully remove this regime and Israel it needs either a partner force or to be willing to commit thousands of its own soldiers to fight and know that hundreds of them will die right like like like did in Iraq I guess like knowing what we know and knowing that there are these groups right and maybe it would be good to give people a primer on the the eastern Kurdistan resistance groups and and the alliance that they've recently formed like where are they standing right now I know they released a statement yesterday but can you explain that to a little bit to people there are several parties across eastern Kurdistan or as they say Iranian Kurdistan and of course they're very diverse and each of them have a different ideology that's that's very normal yes what happened in the past few months was that it's also a very great development for our people at least because they have been also calling for for a form of cooperation between these parties and they finally announced it of course two parties like the Komala and another branch they did not join it because they had some disagreements but that is also normal so the the thing is that these parties would definitely work together if if the things are going to escalate more for example if I want to say about a week ago the Reza Palavi he published a statement and he threatened Kurdish people that if they think about autonomy or I don't know thinking about taking quote-unquote parts of Iran's oil we're going to use the army against them in the future it's incredible that the first Kurdish official who answered to that statement was Abdullah Muhtari from the Komala who was not a part of the coalition so that means that even though they they have disagreements but they are still trying to work together and help each other I have talked to some people in the in the Kurdish parties they are fully prepared for anything that could happen in the upcoming weeks or days or even months I don't know they're fully prepared and what I know is that they are telling me that they are prepared that the the the Israeli army and also the American army would bomb or destroy the military bases on the border and also the checkpoints so that it would be easier for them to enter and probably if if it's going to be bigger than that then maybe they could take over the controls of the cities and what's really interesting is that they yesterday these five parties the coalition published a statement and there were several points but one of the points was that was really interesting for me was that they were calling on people to not damage any public buildings like banks, schools, I don't know offices and that means that probably there is a movement that they want to come back and take over all these buildings and try to control the cities better so this is also something and there is a lot of discussion on social media and people are all saying that yeah we are ready that if something happens we will go in and I think right now the situation is really complicated and like we don't know how people can actually enter yet and you said that yeah is if there is going to be a force that's ready to sacrifice thousands of its members I think there are the Kurds are ready to fight they have been ready fight for forever for decades yeah so this is also like something that the Kurdish people already know that if we want to get rid of this regime we have to sacrifice more for me it's very painful to say this but yeah I think our people have to sacrifice a little bit more more than that they have been sacrificing for over 150 years and I think maybe they have to sacrifice more but one point here is that when I see what's happening when I see that what is being said that Trump is talking to the Kurdish parties to the Kurdish organizations about the situation one thing that I think about is that given the history of at least 15 16 years of cooperation between America and the Kurds in Rojava in in Syria and the fight against ISIS which was which was a great opportunity for Kurdish people yeah but at the end Trump just let Kurds down and didn't really support them against Turkey against all these jihadist groups that are supporting Syria so the question is that what if we fight against this regime we we destroy the regime I mean it's not just us I have to mention that the other ethnic groups are also ready yeah but what if all these ethnic groups fight this regime they destroy this regime and what if Trump just brings someone really bad and someone someone really useless like Reza Pahlavi or other Iranian figures that of course are not uh after Kurdish people's interests what if somebody like Sad comes in power and then the same situation goes on and and then we have to fight that system over and over again so this is also something that I that I also think about it but we still don't know yeah what will happen is America's exact plan it could be something like Iraqi Kurdistan which could benefit the ethnic groups a lot of course there's still gonna be civil war probably there's gonna be instability but at least the the ethnic groups might be able to self-determine you know like I might be able to control their areas and get rid of that Iranian control to some extent maybe not fully but that is also something that could be possible and of course there's gonna be killing there's gonna be a lot of civilians killed and we know that already during all these bombings many civilians are killed we don't know how many exactly because there is no internet connection to to make sure about the the numbers or to investigate that but of course all these Iranian government buildings our RGC bases intelligence offices or facilities they're all located in in civilian areas in in the cities in the city centers all over Iran and also Kurdistan so there's always going to be some civilians who are living there who are walking around there and they get killed so this is also something that's that's really painful but I think our people really had have had enough and they were ready for this and they were they knew that this is this was this was going to happen and yeah yeah yeah it's uh it's such a difficult thing because like it's what four or five weeks ago that we saw the STG and Syrian transitional government and groups affiliated with it like live streaming them killing and mutilating the remains of captured Kurdish men and women in Derizor right like a place where maybe it wasn't a desire to liberate Kurdish people that took the SDF there it was the battle against ISIS and this idea of brotherhood of peoples right that they would liberate the Arab people who live there obviously that has resulted in in these these horrible things that we've seen over the last month and then the the thought of like oh well won't you just send 10 000 more of your children to die so you can liberate people in Tehran and then we'll leave you again yeah I was just thinking about like a four years ago I was in Soleimaniya and I went to the museum you know that they have the red security building and they have like a very good history of the unfile that the genocide against the Kurdish people committed by the Ba'athist state and then they have the 1991 uprising and then they have a lot of commemoration of the battle against the Islamic state and like for my entire life like the the Americans have been leaving Kurdish people to die and then urging them to rise up again and it's just I know it's an incredible like revolutionary capacity and capacity for sacrifice but it's also just very sad that Americans constantly expect Kurdish people to continue to sacrifice and then never fill up their end of the bargain yeah that's unfortunately true and yeah this has been evident in the past few years as well like in in Syria when when when America gave the the green light to Turkey to invade Rojava and also recently that how they just abandoned Kurds of course they're still saying no we didn't abandon Kurds but but but they did and we basically lost almost everything that we had gained in Rojava and there is also like a threat against Iraqi Kurdistan region right now from Turkey and also from Iraq and it's it's just a bitter truth that yeah apparently Kurds are not considered as a long-term partner for the US and also the other western countries but like all these horrible things that are that have been happening to our people in the past 100 years I mean a part of it is of course the result of the western countries and colonization from the european countries great britain russia and also america yeah but at the same time it's it's it's really important to not forget that majority of this tragedy that our people are living in is also caused by by by Turks Arabs and Persians and by that I just don't mean the state I also mean the whole structure in the middle east that that has been prosecuting the Kurds it's it's been centuries that our people are trapped between these powers the Turks Persians and and and Arabs that are also fighting each other but then they they drink all of their wars inside our homeland and then our people get killed and displace and face all the tragedies so yeah this is also our situation right now and I don't know if it's going to be changed to a better situation because it's just so unclear that how the superpowers how the major powers the original the original powers are are planning for these things and how their interests actually matter like we talked about rojava if if america if turkey or nato and other arab countries were not backing the the the new syrian government i would call it syrian arab government because that's how they identify them both yeah they're still the syrian arab republic even a year and a bit later yeah if it was only Kurdish forces and the new government trust me they would not be able to enter all the territories controlled by sdx because sdf is way more advanced and more powerful than them like military wise but sdf was left alone and there was so much pressure on sdx from all the arab countries turkey and also western countries in america so this this whole thing like maybe this is a little bit unrealistic but a lot of people ask me that what's going to be next i think the next is going to be what america and europe want like i'm sure that they don't care about what what the people in kurdistan or the people in iran want they just want to do whatever they want whatever that benefits them and of course the neighboring countries were also follow from the arab countries and definitely turkey they will follow the plan that benefits them so the people are trapped between these decisions if the the iranian structure also remains probably they would also change the course and then cooperate with the with america or or israel or or nato or arab countries only to to remain in power and maintain their interests yeah it's a really difficult time if people are looking to stay informed on this right uh coverage in the us has been poor like they in the english language where would you suggest where could people follow your work and where would you suggest people people look to stay informed on what's happening uh yeah i personally don't post a lot i'm just trying to gather information and like be up to date and then share it with other media that are asking me about and other journalists um but there are several pages that i can suggest one of them is definitely our organization hengao hengao organization for human rights i would also suggest to follow news channels like rudov which they have been working really good on this on this war yeah it's a kurdish tv channel based in iraqi kurdistan i would also suggest to follow the social media pages belonging to the kurdish parties like kdpi or komala just like their official pages on twitter or x for example they post a lot of really um good information i would also suggest i i think i also suggested uh in our last uh talk there is this person called vahid online he is an independent journalist and he has like some really big platforms and he posts a lot of reliable information and videos about the locations and the things that are happening and i would also suggest to follow some other journalists like ali jawan mardi he is the manager and supervisor of the voice of america he also like he has several platforms and they post that he posts a lot of updated information about what's happening but here's also something that i want to warn about i would suggest people to not really believe in what they see on tv channels or media like iran international menoto tv bbc persian because all these media have turned into a platform to do the propaganda for the monarchists and they have been posting a lot of fake news a lot of ai generated content and it's been really damaging the whole course of the if i want to call it revolution or the the war or whatever like that's happening inside iran and Kurdistan so yeah these are the things that i can suggest so far yeah those are great suggestions thank you well thank you very much for joining us today we'll get this out as soon as possible because i know people are very interested to know more about it thanks gordy yeah thanks for inviting me the next time welcome to exactly here a podcast about the consolidation of capital into increasingly centralized forms and how it's ruining your life i am your host me along and with me today to talk about how the consolidation of media monopolies has ruined many many many many many things for many years is vicki ostrubeil friend of the show author of forthcoming april 14th 2026 the extended universe how disney killed the movies and took over the world vicki welcome to the show thanks it's so great to be back thank you mia i'm excited to talk about something about something a little less depressing than the things we could be talking about very mildly less depressing you know like this is the story obviously the story that we're talking about here foremost is paramounts acquisition of warner bros or forthcoming acquisitions since netflix is backed out it technically still could fail but seems very very unlikely to and you know you you could tell things are going great in the news where this is the fun one and the fun one is us before we started recording talking about who we think the sort of nazi commissar they're going to put in charge of cnn is going to be like who is there bery why so things going very good yeah as you can tell oh my god but you you had the most curse name that i've heard so far oh yeah uh tim yeah tim pool i think is probably the most cursed oh yeah yeah that would be the most dark horse candidate i don't know what the numbers on poly market should we look but who's who's a front door i know cnn should we pull it up i think they've probably that's probably up now which i hate i refuse to check poly market even if i couldn't know facts ahead of time i simply will not they can't make me oh god but we're not talking about insider trading war crimes we're talking about insider trading intellectual property so that's pretty good yeah yeah okay so to start let's go back a ways and you want to talk about i guess sort of the beginning of the history of what we're talking about here which is the consolidation of all media into a handful of increasingly large conglomerates yeah absolutely so in a way like consolidation is the entire history of the movie business so obviously what what's happening here with paramount which is one of the oldest one of the old five studios merging with uh warner brothers that leaves disney and paramount warner brothers and sony has the three companies that release movies is this good a 24 is going to get bought of course three weeks from now oh god and netflix and amazon are the news and other studios and netflix was in competition for this uh and with dream as you said anyways but like one of the things that the very beginning of the hollywood system hollywood starts because thomas edison so now we're going way back right the 1890s oh god yeah yeah speaking of speaking a dude to ruthlessly consolidate their power he's like oh we're an intellectual property that's nicely dear god so thomas edison is credited in the u.s uh with inventing the movie camera he is one of five or six people in the world who came up with technology around the same time it's just not linearly possible to name any of them as the inventor of the movie camera but he gets that credit because he sued the shit out of everyone who tried to make a movie for 15 years jesus christ so he had he puts patents on the movie camera he puts patents on his stuff and then and this is in new york he's in new jersey menlo park famously is where his lab is and what he starts doing other than making really really boring movies he's a mid-film producer his movies are not that exciting and at this point a movie is 15 seconds to about a minute often seen in a nicolodian like in a really small screen or like in a small room um these are these are short films 99 percent of them are lost of time we can't we can't watch these movies right but one of the things that that he would do is he because he had the patent on movie cameras anyone who tried to film a movie he would sue them jesus christ it was eventually too hard to maintain this so what he did is he teamed up with the other large independents and eastman codac and they formed a thing i think it's called the motion picture company which is unreferred to us the trust quote unquote and the trust just did this at scale so now instead of it just being him fighting against his competitors it's all the leading movie filmmakers all the leading filmmakers and the literal film company will come down sue you sometimes even beat you up and like and shatter your cameras if you if you try to make a movie without their permission without a license from them and without their equipment right this is such a good system by the way like i just like like the system of property rights so good no problems here exactly so what happens what happens a bunch of filmmakers move to this new land development out in california called hollywood you know it's 1907 they're really far away from new jersey loyans and edison goons right they're as far as possible so hollywood is founded by a bunch of movie pirates basically right that's incredible who are violating you know edison's copyright because they're sick of the of his of his legal harassment so it's some real the mountains are high in the upper far away shit yeah yeah i mean exactly that's literally how far can we get away while still being on the continent like that's you know let's do it from new jersey which like many such cases many people yeah yeah and get that far away from new jersey before but uh you know so jumping forward into the classical hollywood period we're more familiar with there are sort of five major studios and one of the ways that the major studios worked is that they um had something called vertical integration um which is something we should all know about as we are living through times of monopolies amazon is a classic example of vertical integration as is google what vertical integration means is that you own everything in the pipeline for movies you have the offices where the producers work you own the soundstage you employ all the people who work on it you employ the actors you also then own the film that gets made you own the cameras you own the company that produces the film sometimes although there's a situation always on those companies those chemical companies it's not important but you know and then you own the movie theater where it's shown right so like movie theaters before the 40s you would go to a rko pictures house rko is one of the early big ones or a united artists theater and they would only show united artists movies christ so there would be an active competition with one another so your neighborhood would have you know there'd be an mgm there'd be an rko and you would go based on what movie was where then there's antitrust action done in the 40s that breaks up these studios um the studio system sort of slowly collapses they also then loses a lot of market share to television this is a really potented history but i'm trying to give it as much as possible so basically so by the 60s or 70s what you have is a lot of independent producers so the studio has just become a brand and a sort of pot of money and often an often a soundstage they keep the sound stages right but then like distribution becomes independent actors and like directors they all are independent they all have agents right it used to be that they would be hired by a company and they would just work for that company um that's why you know classical hollywood directors would make like 60 movies because they would just churn them out they would just be like directing them show up do it for two weeks show up on the next one do it for two weeks etc just the studio system so then by the 60s and 70s it's starting to look more like what do you have now which is the studios are basically they are the homes of all the producers the producers and people who connect the money and the talent you know and and put it all together and package a deal and market it right and that process it seems like it's sort of a losing proposition the business isn't doing super well until the emergence of the blockbuster the star wars right so um star wars and jaws and a bunch of other movies in the 70s we're going so fast right now i'm trying my best but i'm sorry this is no you're okay yeah this is like i was like here let's talk about like 150 years of history so anyways with the emergence of the blockbusters one of the other things that happens is that um the way blockbusters work is that they are released everywhere in the country at once film comes on used to come on literal physical objects and you can only have so many and they can only be so many places at once right so the way film used to work is they would make a certain number of of film reels if they thought it was going to be big there was a star but the studio was always gambling on how many how how big it would be how many people would pick it up and then they had to sell it to the movie theaters right and then the films circulate when they did well they print more so movies would circulate for like a year right two years sometimes even but with with star wars and the day and date system that we have now what they started doing was just putting it in every movie theater in the country um you also get the emergence of multiplexes white flight in the suburbs i'm really going fast here i'm trying but the result is that movies get both more potentially valuable but that value gets more and more concentrated in the early period of the of the release right in the early window opening weekend was not very meaningful until the 80s really you know late 70s early 80s as that happens you suddenly need more financing and you can make more money off of bigger gambles simultaneously the rest of the economy is going through financialization right which is a process that you've talked about on the show before i can't get into that but yeah we can't and then Reagan deregulates everything right Reagan Reagan rips apart the FCC in many ways uh deregulates media ownership stuff this is the big move then across the 80s the home market opens so you start getting vcrs and this completely transforms the business another time because movies can flop in the theater but you can guarantee rentals right so so for like the 80s and the 90s the big studios kind of could print money because it was pretty hard to lose money on a movie now the people who lost money on movies were like you know dentists from the midwest who they get to invest in and be like oh yeah sorry like there's arcane deals people still got rinsed obviously it was Hollywood it was shady as hell but as so so with the deregulation and with all this money flowing and with the integration of the home market suddenly technology companies like sony and the emergence of of of like lucas films that they also get really into computers lucas lucas famously is into like the computer side of the business all these different technologies get brought into the cinema at the same time as you get deregulated so companies start snatching up these other film studios right and so where once there were five studios and then the 60s and 70s you actually have a ton of independent studios a lot of really small ones um and they started getting doubled up by these bigger conglomerates you know sony is the one that was also a mega corp in the 80s already that that would eventually go on to own to buy out a bunch of movie companies the same thing is happening though with radio with tv the main thing that happens under the fc regulation stuff is that they loosen up whether a movie studio can own a tv studio they used to be fully separate and then and and and broadcaster will change broadcaster will change so studios could own a movie theater or you could own a movie company a radio station and a tv station oh that's so good god and as you can imagine that is how things started to accelerate you get like the abc disney merger in the late 80s um NBC universal mergers and acquisitions become the big thing you know the stock market is booming then you get other big corpse buying them out and then we're just in the the classic phase of consolidation where bigger and bigger fish eat up the smaller ones and this is how i guess importantly for this story suddenly like all of the television news media is owned by these giant ass movie companies which exactly surely nothing will go wrong well yeah and we and we come to you here from i heart radio which you know is a is a lovely brand of technically speaking we are i heart media okay sorry sorry excuse me a technically distinct company okay i think actually don't ask me to explain exactly how that whole right i hear media i hear radio split works but exactly you know so media consolidation this is you know consolidation is the story of capitalism famously right like yeah they're like you know an industry builds lots of new entrepreneurs come into the space people figure out what's possible with the industry as more and more money flows in a few winners come and consolidate we've seen it happen in tech as well but yeah it has particularly perverse effects when we're talking about the visual culture the audio culture and the news media the way information is is spread although i wouldn't you know i would argue that the effects are still pretty perverse from the way social media and tech giants have control things i think that's pretty pretty obvious oh yeah it is extremely bad i would say you might say it's extremely bad you know a lot of people are very upset about the news that david ellison who is the nepo baby to end all nepo babies because he's not a hollywood nepo baby he's not the son of a previous he's just the son of a rich guy who wanted to be in movies so he bought his way into like acting roles and then he like just threw money around until he got skydance global which is this company that you know he's been in hollywood for 10 years technically he's like an experienced producer this man is 43 years old which for like you know the CEO of a billion you know he started with a generous loan from daddy larry let's just say um and uh yeah you know i think people are very upset obviously because he's a trump ally right the the allicens are trump allies he has literally said i'm gonna make more right wing movies you know like you know the daily daily wire you know they they were all washing out but now they'll probably have contracts or whatever you know who knows like it's gonna be money but a lot of people are also saying that this is just for cnn and that's actually not true yeah so a thing that is important to know is that the cable part of this deal netflix was gonna spin off the cable the discovery channel at cnn was gonna spin off all the cable so if he just wanted cnn he could have waited for the netflix deal to go through and he could have just bought it on the market for a steal because the thing about cable is it's losing money if you look at okay this is a really dark fact and apologies everyone but if you look at the rate of cable subscription costs if you look at a meta aggregate data of it the price of the annual subscription to cable goes up by the distributed amount of the previous years subscription costs that were lost by boomers dying Jesus Christ so basically it is a literally dying it is a literally dying market the only people who still pay for cable other than institutional forces are like people above 60 and they're just literally dying and the price goes up as more and more of them die it is it is over as a business cable even espn disney is trying to get rid of the espn right even sports are valueless now i'm not valueless i mean so billions of dollars obviously but so these so these worlds yeah yeah you know if you look at what espn's like try to do about this they're like just turning into an influencer factory yeah with just like rich isan and like all these fucking unhinged dipshits exactly so anyway so people are pretty like despairing about it because they think it's about cnn but if it was just about cnn like i said they could have just waited and gotten it for a song david ellison really thinks he's a he's cosplaying as a movie producer but because he has so much money he's succeeding yeah of the movies he's produced that you might like although i didn't like it a lot of people like top gun maverick like it's fun i guess like that's everything about that movie suddenly just like clicks into focus it's like yeah oh i just want you to know that top gun maverick is the greatest book of art that he produced by some extreme margin this guy is responsible for terminators five and six that would be a dark fate and chenesis oh no he produced geostorm which you may remember came too late to to capitalize on the disaster thing in 2017 he made the gemini man movie which was what will smith fought will smith with weird aging technology oh i visually remember seeing tv characters without that it kind of killed will smith's marketability as a star like that was kind of the film like after like god shudder on he's responsible for ending will smith he did this the uh the spy kids reboot which spy kids are to get in from 20s oh no this guy jesus has made just really bad movies all of these weird right wing people are all like the thing they want to do is make movies this is like what's like killing the daily wire is that they decided to be a movie company and it turns out they can't make movies but it's like this guy is like what what if you had that but backed by like the entire tech capital apparatus and your dad was fucking leary ellison the oracle guy like one of the richest test fascist who's ever lived then you can do it then you can just buy yourself a movie studio and you can do it because the thing movies need is money and then you can keep buying other movie studios but and this is a bit contrarian i'm not sure that this is worse for movies than netflix getting it because netflix would have likely sabotaged what was remaining of wb's theatrical business model right like netflix doesn't like the theater now they've been trying to get into theatrical because that's like you know it's cash on the table you know it's how you build it's the greatest marketing on earth right and you when you have a big hit film then that's a franchise you get tv shows you get theme parks you get you know uh lunchboxes you know toys t-shirts you get resales you get a reboot 10 years down the line right you get licensing um so they want that but but netflix is really i mean they hate movies netflix literally has a production design a design philosophy of making movies that are designed for people who aren't looking at them so that the characters say what they're doing i mean there was this big article that came out about this a few weeks ago like yeah netflix is a nightmare company so it's a real it's a real silencor of this kind of situation yeah like you've got this fascist creep but at least he like really thinks he likes movies you know like i don't know anyway the point being people are very upset about this news because it's happened to you because he's a trump ally there's this political angle they were making all this noise they were begging trump to do it y'all are 30 years late to this being a problem like i'm not trying to be like i'm not trying to be like that whatever like no yeah like but like we are well but like having three movie studios instead of two like you're already doing pretty bad like yeah in the 30s as i gave you in that little part of history in the 30s hollywood was so brutally integrated that they literally the federal government literally broke it apart at the height at the height of the studio system the biggest company at the time which i believe was mgm was the big studio controlled 18 percent of the market of the film market which is massive i mean the market of anything 18th of a market is obscene but hideous yeah disney in a bunch of the past years has run 40 percent of the market worldwide worldwide not just domestic right so like we are already at this level of concentration like yeah the fact that that it keeps going like yes it does mean there will be fewer and fewer movies it does mean more layoffs it means things are getting worse but you know we've been here you know i'm saying yeah i think it's 30 something to me i think it's actually only 37 percent i'm just only 37 oh wow wow yeah three percent sorry i rounded up i'm sorry about that yeah well and this is something i i think gets back to one of the sort of political answers that i've been seeing to this is like you know this return from kind of like the left of the democratic party to being like oh we should talk about uh like anti-monopoly and we should do like trust busting again it's like probably yeah but we did this right like we did this we got rid of the monopolies and then they came back it's like this is you know this this is the problem is that this is this is basically a structural problem of capital is this kind of consolidation and you break up the monopolies but they'll just reform it requires you to win the battle forever and all the monopolies have to do is get like one fascist elected or get like like all they need is one Ronald Reagan and you just lose everything yeah and it's like okay like this this is a problem that can't be solved just by tinkering on the edges of the system you have to actually like destroy the conditions that make it possible and those aren't regulatory conditions those are hold on why are people allowed to own this shit yeah and i think that's exactly right and i think you know one of the things about monopolization which is famous one of the things that that even capitalists don't like about monopolies is that the quality goes down famous yeah right because you don't you don't want to compete whatever there's literally no reason to try and make the product good but like one of the things about the concentration of ip and like one of the things that's like sort of scary about their it's consolidation in general and this is a fact that's really important to understand when you own a bucket of intellectual property let's say you own sesame street right which is one that's not owned so it's a good example to use because it's weird when you own sesame street and if you start to make products of sesame street it means that every idea that isn't sesame street but threatens to become more popular than sesame street is a threat yeah so it is if you own if you own enough ip it is in your logical material interest to stop new ideas from being made because every new idea is competition if you own the back catalog of bob dillon for has like some of these investment firms do you i think he's i think he has sold to hypnosis or one of these big there these big music investment firms that own the the rights to all these old songs if you guys if y'all remember in 2018 2019 all movie trailers suddenly started having weird sad girl covers of like 60s and 70s pop songs do you remember this era oh yeah yeah like a sad guitar girl and it was just like what happened in like hollywood was there like some weird trend no what happened was these investment firms got hold of it and if they can release a new cover version of a song oh god they're gonna get a copy they hit the property rights twice so they get it on the new they get on a new play and then people go back to the old ones they're reminded of it yeah because it's worse too because it's because the new ones are all shit it's like oh god and and and the this is only possible because of the way that the streaming services got consolidated and that they pay per play because pay per play as everyone knows completely screws artists there's just no way yeah to make any money off that yeah but if you own a massive library like the um like the bmg or sony universal if you own a library like that you do nothing and you make billions of years yeah right so it becomes this permanent perfect rent that you never have to worry about so all you have to do is buy enough musical ip and then try and get new artists who are hot to cover your old ip so this is like this really weird esoteric seeming you know it's based on the between particular recording uh copyrights and the copyrights of like individual song of the song writing it's like built on this sort of weird esoteric structure of intellectual property law which like when you start talking about it people's eyes literally like roll into the back of their head like a daisy they like fall over and a daisy pops up like the cartoon they're just dead it's not interesting but like because of that for five years when you went to the grocery store you would be in a weird uncanny valley where you were hearing a song that you thought you recognized but was like slightly different yeah right so the entire material structure of the world yeah like the psychic structure of the world gets transformed by these weird exploits over like financial loopholes by the worst people on earth whose goal is to let never let you hear a new song right like they never want you to hear new music again they just want the boomer tracks to play forever with like new versions by you know they just want charlie xcx to record fucking uh jefferson airplane like that's their that's their wettest dream you know and all that shit is going on in the background of your life right like i mean it's not it's it's but it's affecting the psychic atmosphere it's producing nostalgia it's producing all these affects that are right for fascism it makes people want to go back yeah it's like okay what what happened the last time we saw like the completely unhinged like concentration of all capital monopolies just like well all that capital was liquidated by world war two there was and i mean one more one as well too right these were both to a larger extent this is something that you know if you go back and read anyone who's doing any political analysis about world war one in the lead up to it and as it's happening the thing everyone is talking about is like is is the consolidation monopoly capital and i think you can argue maybe that the early 1800s had like a larger consolidation just in the sense of like i'm questionable as to whether this is just because it's too expensive to literally run a country but like we we haven't quite returned to like the east india company has an army and they conquer countries periodically but like i think it's just because that's too expensive and you'd rather just outsource that to the state but it's less far than you think it's close than you think because yeah the part of the way that it outsourced us to the state and this is in this is all stuff from my upcoming book which you can pre-order now that's true the world trade organization one of the things that it did when you joined the wto and this was done by lobbyists mostly film and pharma and chemical lobbyists from the u.s. makes sense if you joined the wto you have to accept you don't not only have to accept their copyright and piracy law you have to agree to build copyright courts and copyright police in your country jesus christ so that if say apple sees you making a fake iphone they have a liberal legal procedure domestic to your country to force you to stop to smush those pirates major corporations can get police in vietnam to go in and light a warehouse on fire because it's full of fake goods like without ever leaving the u.s. right so yeah yeah the company is more integrated through these world trade organizations well they did the ordo liberal thing of where we're using the supras state apparatus to to negate the sovereignty of the state by creating the super state which rerun yes so i mean i'm obviously interested in the ip and the cultural angle this is the only law like this in any of these agreements all the rest of the trade agreements like they can negotiate but like part of what's so obscene about trump's tariffs is that the u.s. already had this it was called the priority watch list they just had this list in the white house where they could just say you're not doing a good job enough stopping piracy and it gives the white house unilateral capacity to create trade embargoes on people without going to congress like this was all the tariffs which also hurt your economy obviously but even if they worked the way trump imagines they do like he already had that power and like other presidents have been using it for decades big visible sanctions like what they put on iran or venezuela are a much more dramatic upscale but the priority watch list they can just threaten to upgrade you from on the watch list to a priority country on that and you will watch countries fold entirely on trade policy like it's crazy so like one of the things interesting about this moment and about the trump's moment is that they're ripping apart their own infrastructure because they literally just don't understand how it works no it's like it's like that you headed them an aircraft carrier and they're ripping out the copper wires just trying to sell it and it's like you have an aircraft carrier what are we doing yeah oh god exactly you know so again like i think there is this talk about the consolidation of culture and i think like you know people like the ellisons are just they're just vulgar at it yeah like the thing is like mike eisner was better at it like bob eiger is who is the CEO of disney uh currently always about to step down bob eiger saw them through the acquisition of marvel and star wars and all that he is an incredible i mean you know whatever his team maybe he himself is a pretty unimpressive guy but like you know like other than that internal politics which is what all CEOs are good at anyway um you know like these these these companies were already good at this and like what has happened is that a wing of the capitalist who are really bad at it and really resentful because they're all sort of like the david ellisons in the world they're all the resentful fail sons of wealth who you know they want more power and more respect and they don't appreciate how much their shit is already built on the very thing they claim to want to do yeah well and i guess it is to some extent a kind of funny like the election of trump and also just sort of ellisons just like devouring this is what is like third studio that he's eaten in like five years this is and like all all these forces being devoured by this is like well yeah like this is what happens when you set up a system like this eventually there's going to be a bigger fish who's just going to devour you because they have for example oracle behind them which is just an amount of capital that right like outside of like disney you can't have that kind of capital right and like with trump it's like yeah you thought you finally created a monster that is large enough to shatter the extremely delicate and complicated system that you did and is also just doesn't understand it yeah exactly and i think like if you want to have the future of of hollywood looks like i mean you know you can go worse than to look at china right china is the most dynamic film market it overtook the us as the number one value of the box office in 2022 i think i think it did in 2021 but that was still covid shutdown affected yeah 2022 2023 china became an actual the actual plurality of ticket sales in the world by dollar if not by number by number they've already long surpassed us yeah yeah but the way that chinese film companies work is like they're all pretty nakedly financial companies like tencent and ali baba right and like these are companies they're just already from other sectors and they're just like we have cash we use the cash to make a move yeah which is what the studios always did too right i want to be really clear like i don't want to romanticize but like you know that's where it always was right and it's just that like in the turn of the century when hollywood was being made industries were just more divided yeah the reason to talk about all of this business stuff on some level um i mean it's interesting on its own as history it's interesting as critique of capitalism but i think it's also interesting because it affects the aesthetics like of what the movies that get made right and i think when we think about when people think about fascist propaganda you know we think about the nazis right obviously because the nazis had the longest running fascist propaganda machine in the world they had the ministry of culture under gerbils right and i think when we talk about nazi propaganda we think about trying for the will and we think about stuff like juden sus right like extremely horrifying anti-semitic bullshit yeah extremely horrifying anti-semitic movies there were two of them in the 10 years that gerbils ran the ufa which is the film company that made movies for germany the vast majority the vast majority of films under the right were frothy comedies and musicals and adventure stories because the principle that gerbils operated on was called the orchestra principle and he believed that you should just actually art should just be reduced to creating feelings it should be totally de-intellectualized and then very little of that art remains those movies are mid you know the movies made by you are not good like even the ones that are like not offensive like they're they're just mid but they all do the same thing they all work together around a principle certain principles around family and romantic love and domestic life most of it in offensive in and of itself and so i think when we think about elison taking over i think we imagine you know as we were joking about in the beginning shit like the daily wire anti-woke Cinderella or whatever the fuck yeah am i allowed to cuss i'm doing so much of it yeah yeah i swear all the time okay thank god um we are not regulated by the FCC yo let's go no one is these days i mean i guess we technically are but we're not under the radio regulation so we can say whatever we want perfect love that but like fascist filmmaking has not looked like that for the most part in the history of it fascist filmmaking looks like family adventure fair often and i think we have been so blinded to the way that this happens that we imagine that elison taking over is suddenly gonna mean that now there's gonna be fascist movies and theaters but like have y'all been to them yes like have y'all seen what warden brothers did with like the snider verse like yeah like did you did you watch the beekeeper right speaking of netflix like that was that was the most fascist movie i have ever seen exactly it is literally it is a movie that is just a guy shooting a bunch of people and then the background superstructure is an explanation of what the furor is which is the like the the force that is outside of the order that is able to violate the rules of the order in order to in order to create the order itself except it's a guy called the beekeeper and he just shoots people like it's that's pretty bad that's pretty bad yeah i did not watch that one and i like statement it's really unhinged i i watched it with my family nightmare holy shit it's going insane yeah things are so rad that like there was a movie nobody with bob odin kirk that came out in 2019 and it was basically a parody of those like leon mason you know the john wick movies and like leon mason like dad men's taken stuff right yeah and it was a parody you maybe you could be clued in by the fact it was bob odin kirk and it was filled with comedians maybe you could be clued in by the fact that he's fighting because they took his daughter's hello kitty bracelet like there's a pretty cool like but it's dry but it's a dry place it's very dry yeah every single professional film critic reviewed it like it was dead serious like bob was first attempting to become the next leon mason and part of that is because he they shot good action sequences like he did a good job with this attire yeah but then what happens what happened next is that now there's a nobody too and it's completely forgotten the joke and it's not good either so like he's just fucking christ yeah and bob odin kirk just like he had this one window where he could really sell that he couldn't sell it in the sequel it doesn't matter no it's it's it's the jordan sequels right exactly but like we're just in a time of extreme literalism yeah where like everything is really really like script driven it's really on its face it's really textual um everything is just selling something else everything can possibly be sequel nothing really changes politics only exists as bureaucracy these are all deeply fascist concepts they're just more subtle than use stepping ss uniforms you know part of what's so funny about the daily wire is it's like like they come for disney like you can't do anything to make a more fascist pot like disney entertains people and makes a fascist populist like they're just bad filmmakers and that kind of matters yeah i think there is a chance that like i don't know ellison is such a dumbass that he just tries to do it anyways like he just tries to be like a f*** well even then like he hasn't really made like a stereotype of nazi movies he's made like actual nazi movies just to say the f***ing top gun maverick yeah and people love to stop the maverick people were like i guess it's maybe kind of problematic like but we love you know it's like that movie is like literally propaganda for the air force i like i thought it was fun yeah don't get me wrong but like people are have been really trained to not see that stuff yeah and it's like we're like now fighting the war that that movie was propaganda for yes exactly like we literally we literally you're fighting our we've made it a rod like where we bombed a ride at all f-f teams went down for the first time the gulf war yeah but because they got shot down by her own by her own allies air defenses you know why we didn't have maverick we didn't have tom cruise training them and that's what allison's gonna do that's why i'm happy he's merging it because our brave boys and guys are gonna be safer god so yeah anyways i don't know where i'm going with with this because obviously things are bad and anyone betting against things getting worse over the last 10 years has lost their pants right but things can get worse but like also there is the actual object the actual film object exists and like part of what has been hard about hollywood the reason they've built these monopoly structures the reason they built these ip structures is because because audiences are fickle and that's annoying and you can't just like force stuff down their throats and they're not going to just like buy something for sure every time and you have to sort of seduce them right like it's it's you have to you have to make something they want to see right the mcu was unstoppable until it stopped and now no one likes it and it's really annoying right like yeah and they still make their money back on the mcu like they're doing fine no do not play a violin for for kevin feige he's doing fine you know he's crying on his third shot you know but like but so i guess what i'm saying is that like is that like as we enter into more and more naked versions of this what it should help us do rather than think oh my god all is lost is to reflect on how we got here already how often we were already here under liberalism under biden under just regular capitalist conditions how often we've already been here reevaluate the way we think about what good culture could look like and then start to move yeah i want to come back to something i said a few years ago when we did a show with gare about the people's joker and um i saw the tv glow yeah i saw the tv glow the one i was about to say the one about the egg who has the bad ending and never transitions yes the horror movie about not transitioning yeah yeah i think there is an extent to which you know there was a really brief attempt to sort of sublimate transness into film for like one year but you know like we're the people who've been spat out of this but also trans people are making movies at a rate that has never happened before like ever there's never been anything like it and you know like the wachowski's like have a studio now where they're pumping out a bunch of trans movies and like you know we're getting like manhunter and we're getting like a whole bunch of other stuff and you know the thing i said a few years ago i think is even more desperate and true now is that like trans film is one of the last things fighting for the existence of film as a medium and not as a way to sell you toys and like $15 popcorn hey they also tell you all expenses paid vacations you have to go into debt for it okay mia i think it's really valuable we're good that support trans film support local film and the thing about movies is that movies are bad but the other thing is that movies are good so it's hard this is a dialectic emotion yeah yeah look and i will say this there has been for many thousands of years a second dialectic operating and then it's a dialectic between labor and capital that's probably i probably backed it in capital too far but you know fuck it i don't know we can we we can resolve we can resolve movies good and movies bad by resolving the other dialectic of capital and labor by simply destroying the categories and ending the class system i believe in us we can make movie good again movie has never been good there can be a new future we're movie good yes exactly yeah yeah i believe one final thing vicki where where can people find your book yes it's being put out by haymarket so you can go to their website i also have a link to my bookshop page via blue sky i'm vicki a cab on blue sky so if you want to watch me posting through it you know come hang out i guess yeah pre-order it talk to libraries about it ask a local if you have a local bookshop asking them that stuff really helps um it'll make a huge difference and yeah i would really appreciate any of that if you're if you're interested in in how disney destroyed the world and in the ways that we've been talking about here today can read way more about it yeah and i don't know vicki vicki's books good can confirm have read they are they are they're good yeah switching to virgin media's lightning fast broadband is easy we'll handle everything for you that smooth broadband and smooth switching smooth like a walrus on a speedboat powering through open steward waters yeah that smooth visit virgin media dot com new customers only virgin fiber areas restrictions and credit check supply no setup fee online only terms apply we should have kept working on that bomb that they thought would turn the entire enemy army gay which was the thing they really put money into this is it could happen here executive disorder our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the white house the crumbling world and what it means for you i'm garrison davis today i'm joined by me along james stout and robert evans this episode we are covering the week of february 25th to march 4th a house committee just today on wednesday has subpoenaed a g hambony to testify on her handling of the epstein investigation with five republicans joining all democrats in the vote hillary clinton was asked about pizza gate and ufo's during her congressional testimony on jeffrey epstein more on that next week in a special episode god and netflix declined to raise their offer to buy warner brothers resulting in paramount winning the bidding war fcc chairman brendan car held cnbc that the paramount deal would be approved quote unquote pretty quickly and that netflix quote would have had a very difficult path saying the paramount deal is quote a lot cleaner does not raise all the same types of concerns unquote more on that in the episode before this one it's insane he just said that out loud yeah on thursday february 26th almost a year after mamoud khalil was first detained ice agents arrested another columbia student in the early hours of the morning shortly after 6 a.m five plain clothes agents from the department of homeland security showed up outside a columbia apartment building without a warrant demanding to be let inside the agents gained entry by falsely telling the building's superintendent that they were police searching for a missing child even bringing pictures of this fake kid the agents used this lie to enter into the apartment of 29 year old student ellie aga java where she was then arrested and taken off campus after being detained aga java posted on instagram quote dhs illegally arrested me please help this same day mayor mom donnie happened to be meeting with president trump in the white house regarding federal funding for the sunny side yards housing project during this meeting the mayor voiced opposition to ice raids and concern about the detention of the columbia student earlier that morning i shared my concern with the president about ices detention of columbia student elmina aga java yesterday morning as well as the detention of four additional new yorkers in relation to the university mamoud khalil mohsen mahadawi yonsei o chung and the car cordia i asked that their cases be dropped i'm grateful that shortly after our meeting the president called me to inform me that elmina would be imminently released and indeed she was the mayor also discussed the release of aga java in a question during this press conference during your advocacy with president trump what do you think the winning argument was and did they reverse course all i can tell you is is what happened which is that i shared directly with the president a list of names of columbia students and those who have also been detained because of their activity on columbia campus and that these actions do nothing to advance the cause of public safety and i asked that these cases be dropped and the president said that he would look into it soon after the meeting i received a phone call from the president saying that he was going to imminently release her at 3 45 p.m aga java posted on instagram that she'd been released and was quote unquote safe and okay on thursday night a dhs spokesperson told the reporter that aga java's student visa was terminated in 2016 for failing to attend classes and that quote ice placed her in removal proceedings and she's been released while she waits for her hearing unquote the current state of her case is unknown with neither her lawyers nor dhs providing any follow-up statements that's the last part is very confusing to me right because if she had lost her student visa for nonattendance like that that can happen that would have shown up in service right and that that was a decade ago that part confused me i just i was scanning it right before we started and i figured i'd just ask you in the episode but yeah i mean she has no pending cases with dhs in their system or no pending appeals it's very unclear what happened here or the exact cause of why she was arrested and the state of whatever visa she's on right yeah she could have been on a completely different visa yeah it's very unclear then there's a lot here that i'd like to know many such cases i guess so to start with a couple of immigration things um do you want to send it hearing yesterday that's tuesday christine gnome doubled down on the claims she's previously made about alex prety which are as far as we can tell false right saying his actions were quote the definition of domestic terrorism she's in the house testifying today so i will try and summarize both those testimonies in next week's ed uh just just so we don't end up covering this twice and we've got a lot to address today this is breaking news right before we release the podcast christine gnome the secretary of homeland security is going to be leaving that job at the end of march and she will be replaced by current united states senator for oklahoma mark wane mullen gnome will be moving into another job where she will be the special envoy for the shield of the americans uh which is a security initiative for the western hemisphere that trump is is planning on telling us more about this weekend mullen for those aren't familiar is a citizen of the jerricky nation he has been in the house of representatives for 10 years before uh he was in the senate for the last three years and he used to be a professional mma fighter secondly hennepin county attorney mary moriarty has announced an investigation into potential misconduct by federal officers in the state in response dhs has claimed that quote federal officials acting in the course of their duties are immune from liability under state law this isn't true in legal terms right federal officials can be prosecuted if their actions weren't necessary or proper or not in the course of their duties so this pertains to the supremacy clause of the constitution right and there's a two-part test for supremacy clause immunity a the federal officials actions are authorized under federal law and b that they are quote necessary and proper in the execution of their duties as a federal officer i will link in the sources of our document to a tense circuit case on this uh the case was about some federal wildlife officers who had crossed onto private land during a wolf collaring operation uh in wyoming and then wyoming attempt to prosecute them for trespassing right um so we can see like a like a previous example of this but but it's not true that they have complete immunity from state laws which is what's important here i want to move on to iran just like most of the u.s. military has done but um thank you it works so hard on these yeah so we made a whole episode about this which came out on wednesday of this week and i don't want to recap what we said there that is why we make lots of episodes so you can go into depth on things so i will for the most part be picking up on that by updating people on things that have happened in the 24 hours since we recorded that firstly it seems that the attacks or except timing was heavily driven by israel who were likely acting on intelligence about the whereabouts of hameni the attacks has occurred in the daytime which is pretty unusual like normally they'll want to time these things with moon phase uh they want to do them at night just to make them safer for any of the piloted aircrafts that they're using right i also wanted to point out so the source for this israel claim uh let's start there comes from uh the rapid response 47 account i guess i described that as like a white house affiliated twitter account i can't think of the yeah it's one of the accounts at the rate it's not white house but it's one of the accounts that the trump administration runs one of the accounts the administration uses to disseminate information yeah it's quotation here from marco rubio quote the president made a very wise decision we knew that there was going to be an israeli action we knew that that would precipitate an attack against american forces and we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks we would suffer higher casualties it seems like the initial push came from israel right i'd also like to add that tehran is getting bombed very heavily as we record this something i think is missing in that discourse we were actually going to have an episode about the water crisis in iran this week yeah for obvious reasons we uh we made another iran-based episode but iran is critically low on water right uh lake umia which is was the largest lake in asia is essentially gone now from damning from draining of aquifers and tehran is sitting on top of an empty aquifer which leads to a greater potential for damage i guess with with some of these large bombs that we that we're seeing drop there right i mean it also means that absent even any of this military regression from the us that we're seeing right now iran was in realistic danger of becoming a failed state yes because of the sheer lack of water that is an existential threat when your capital city is running out of water like there's no other way to look at that kind of scale of problem and the fact that now they're dealing with this massacre of the people who had been running things as well as mass destruction via the air of a lot of civil infrastructure this is just so much more of a problem and it yeah it makes the odds of the end result of all this being a failed state in the region that leads to a humanitarian crisis on scale of the refugee crisis we saw during the early stages of the syrians of a war much likelier yeah especially when you consider that like there are millions of refugees already living in iran yeah right from afghanistan right right has been deporting them on a massive level but like yes the chances of this being an absolute humanitarian disaster are worryingly high yeah tehran received one millimeter of rain yeah last year called some guardian reporting i read like they were already as you said very close to people turning on the taps and nothing coming out yeah this is not helping that i want to move on to these claims that we have seen in the past 24 hours about a Kurdish partner force uh in eastern Kurdistan right um in Kurdish that will be called rojolat that will be western iran right right like Kurdistan the broader region is western iran northern iraq northeast syria southern turkey right you can draw kind of a big glob around all those parts of the world that's Kurdistan yeah exactly you can like draw up lots and encompasses all of those things yeah obviously korea stein is not a state it is an area it's not at all that is part of the issue at stake here kind of a big deal kind of the thing yeah so axios has reported that trump called baffle talabani and marsud bazzani who are the leaders of the two biggest factions in iraqi kurdistan yeah southern kurdistan northern iraq the piece was written by barak ravide this is not barak's first time joining us on executive disorder friend of the barred yeah yeah yeah a regular guest barak ravide people remember last time that we talked about barak it was in the context of a leaked proposal for peace between russia and ukraine that appeared to be essentially a list of russian demands but was not present was presented as a u.s proposal i will try and remember what week we talked about that and then you saw that link in case people want to go back right like i've spent a lot of time pointing out on various websites how bad this piece was it was atrocious in its understanding of Kurdish movements for instance it uh it listed talabani and bazzani as leaders of iranian kurdish factions what yeah i think it's important to note at this point that like media perceptions of the middle east are often formed by people whose understanding is eclipsed by the introductory part of the wikipedia article on a given topic vastly like that's not an exaggeration yeah like this is this is this is like saying macron is the leader of like the quabbecki separatists yeah like that kind of shit like yeah i see that i do believe actually but well that's a separate episode i will be actually doing that in partnership with info wars france uh i'm very excited to see that get off the ground info wars france it's a frightening concept genuinely hey baby they're turning the frogs gay we got to do something about that that was a french french joke very good excellent sorry the they also kind of didn't understand that stf and pesh mega were distinct entities it appears Jesus christ wildly different entities in combat efficacy too yes yeah yeah very just like unless they're talking about the pesh mega roge i guess which like exists largely in telegram rooms as you say the piece does line up with the strategies that we are seeing though right there has been significant bombing of irgc and police facilities along the border with iraq there have been and continue to be many eastern kurdish groups who are based in iraq right now right there has been significant bombing along the road from halab to kamansha right which would be like a road that you would use if you're planning to to move some some people in that way in theory the kdp and the puk so they are the two major kurdish factions in iraq have unified their pesh mega pesh mega means those who face death they're the armed forces that are affiliated to the two kurdish political parties this is really kind of a rhetorical construct because they have regional commands which effectively mirror the areas where the kdp and the puk are in control anyway but they have unified payroll which is interesting it is also worth noting that pro iran groups instead of raq have been targeting pesh mega with drone attacks both sides in this conflict are bombing iraq right now which really does suck for people in iraq yeah i mean like this conflict has been ever-present obviously after the iraq war iran exerted a significant amount of influence they brought explicitly formed penetrators to the shia militias in the region the akhlaiq moktad al sadr who was probably the most successful political figure of the war years and was very heavily involved with iran during the fighting in mozal you had pesh merga you had iraqi army soldiers generally from around bagdad and then you had the p m f's the popular mobilization forces and these were all iran-backed militias and traveling especially as i was with periods you had to always be really careful in the p m f positions because you never knew what would happen because again they are enemies they were tied together fighting isis but they are not allied forces and they have a history of fighting each other yeah that was a wild time he had a lot of people who had a lot of beef on the same side of that particular contract it's also probably worth noting at this point that like it was the department of defense not the cia that was really driving the boat yes when it came to like supporting the Kurds in syria yeah the cia went with uh the tfsa right the turkish free syrian army which does not have a great record as as far as not doing war crimes goes i also received confirmation today that bahrzani and talabani spoke with iran's foreign minister so they've spoken with both trump and the iranian foreign minister kubad talabani who's the deputy prime minister of Kurdistan not the same person as baffel talabani the leader of the puk made a statement to say that the Kurdistan region was not involved in the conflict i think it's very unlikely that we will see large peshmerga groups from northern iraq southern Kurdistan entering iran in the near future yeah i do think it's interesting that ravide got this piece leaked to him because things don't generally get leaked because one person has a crisis of conscience that does happen sometimes but in events like this it is normally a choice and this particular story leaves the Kurdish people in a very difficult position because it puts a target directly on them for the iranian ratio right and uh they can fight or not fight but they have been singled out as a group that is going to be the ground forces of this is raley and us aggression and what that means is they will be singled out for oppression at home whether or not they fight that leaves them in a place where they might have to choose to fight right or they might fight but not through their own choosing there has been for some time an alliance of for some time i think 22nd of february is when it was made of five Kurdish groups five Iranian Kurdish groups these are rather than saying them like phonetically how to read out the initials people want to look them up pj ak pak kdpi and then these two groups have names not initials there are two of the three parts of komala and haba it is more likely that these groups specifically kdpi will be willing to engage we do know that trump spoke to mustafa that he's a kdpi leader i have had sources that suggest it some Kurdish and some non Kurdish groups have at least the intention or desire to enter Iran and fight i'm not really comfortable naming particularly which ones i'd want data sourcing on that yeah what they plan to do is a little unclear right none of these rojelati groups are massive like numerically they don't have the manpower however itv reported that weapons have been stockpiled in eastern Kurdistan for a while and as we saw in in rojava as we saw in southern Kurdistan and the the Islamic state times like their ability to uh to scale up their forces pretty rapidly is something that the Kurds have retained for a long time yeah an advantage they have over so obviously it is true that in the months preceding this there were uprisings in iran and tens of thousands were killed by the government and that represents the people who in normal iranian civil society would have been kind of best positioned to be active and a part of any sort of like government that were to follow if the current government collapses under the onslaught being directed against it a lot of those people are dead that's not really the same case with the Kurdish movement because at any given time three quarters of the Kurdish movement is not you know the more or less outside of iran no physically present and this is what happened in syria too when you had other parts of the country massively depleted by the slaughter fighting Assad in northeast syria you were able to have Kurds from southern turkey and from northern iraq come in and provide a lot of the backbone of what became these large and effective fighting units that were able to defeat isis when you're talking about like well what's going to happen if the government of iran starts to crumble there's a pretty good odds that you wind up with a sizable Kurdish force and it would very likely be supported by west or at least initially by western munitions in that chunk of iran like that's that's a very possible outcome yeah i think it's probably if we do see like continued a strikes for the iranian state to disappear in its current form that needs to be a ground element right uh yes and these are among the most likely people it is of course important to include the context that the us is less than a month uh of abandoning its Kurdish allies in syria right yeah and you should never if you're if you're listening to this and a member of like a foreign militant group that the us is talking to don't ever trust us bad friends yeah yeah bad friends indeed yeah they're not friends at all but allies not friends at all guys that will fuck you the second we can like the second we can yeah i will say that the americans in syria was specifically there to fight isis they wanted there to aid in the Kurdish freedom struggle right right and they have been very consistent about not aiding the other thing about rojava was it was very explicitly not a state and not an attempt to carve out a separate state and they were always extremely emphatic about that so it's a very different situation than anything you're seeing with the regime change the trump administration is working on yeah yeah let's take a break here and then we're going to talk about boats all right we are back and it's boat time it boat time yeah james stout phd yeah you can't see but i'm wearing my little boat hat uh right now i've got one of those stripy shirts on so the united states has sunk a submarine and a total of 17 iranian ships it's claiming in a briefing st com said they were going after the entire iranian navy at the current time they claim there are no iranian ships in the strait of homoose the arabian gulf or the gulf of oman this briefing was interesting because they explicitly made the comparison to the invasion of iraq not an invasion not a war that has the greatest rep in recent months and years even among conservatives at this point yeah trump trump has made a thing of uh i mean trump wasn't like strongly opposed to the war in iraq right but uh i think he has acknowledged that it was a mistake or the way it was conducted was poor at least what they said here was that the the scale of this bombing campaign was twice that of the shokanore bombing campaign that we saw in iraq they have so far used cruise missiles air strikes b2 b1 and b52 bombers right baby long range precision strike missiles for the first time they call them prisms and something called lucas drones which are kind of interesting to me they are the result of the united states capturing and reverse engineering an iranian shahid drone the shahid is like a sounds like a lawn mower very distinctive sound like i've heard them flying over and yeah but they're a one-way attract drone they're essentially a sort of guided munition they're very cheap and they've been very effective for iran and for russia who who now makes has licensed production of these drones so it's interesting that the us is openly just saying yeah we saw that and we copied it it's it's one of the best ideas in warfare of the last hundred years it's an incredibly effective platform that seals up an enormous number of holes that have always existed in modern militaries like the capacity gap that it allows particularly a country like aranta seal right because with enough shahids you effectively can mimic not just the assassination capabilities of like bigger drones but something like close air support in a way that's very hard to interdict with traditional air power right yeah that that's a real sea change and they seem to be being used effectively right now yeah they're cheap there's tons of them ukraine they've used like intercepted drones to intercept them right but that requires a lot of time technology and and uh like human effort yeah so i think this is probably a good time james for me to talk about munitions because as as you noted we're we're using a significant amount of high-precision projectiles we're using like advanced weapon systems that are made to allow us to hit targets very precisely that could not be hit with dumb munitions or with less intelligent munitions yeah the downside of this is that it's hard to make enough munitions to maintain on a war footing in peacetime because in peacetime it's kind of a waste of money as an industry and so capitalism doesn't tend to unless there's a war on reward companies for producing the kind of like munitions and number in the kind of number you would need to fight a modern war and so whenever one does start up you wind up with this situation we're seeing this it we saw this with russia and ukraine we're still seeing it in russia and ukraine and we saw it in world war one two where very suddenly everyone runs out of ammunition right and prior to the united states going to i'm gonna say go into war with iran again like literally about a week before there was an article that that dropped in the i think the wall street journal about how trump's top generals were really worried that the united states did not have enough munitions to sustain uh conflict with iran for any significant period of time and there's immediately been reports as soon as this started that that is in fact exactly what's fucking happening there's a um a good piece on cnn politics written by shan lin gas kelly atwood and isabel christian and it describes or at least it talks to conversations with someone at the pentagon saying that the united states is burning through long-range precision guided missiles at an unsustainable rate and this is not just to attack iranian positions but also to stop iranian ballistic missiles uh quote from that source each intercept represents hundreds of hours of training readiness and technology all coming together to work is designed so that means you you don't have an infinite number of these um whereas iran is capable of producing a significant number of the ballistic missiles and the drones that that these precision munitions are needed to shoot down iran's producing something like a hundred ballistic missiles a month and had a stockpile going into this we can build six or seven interceptor missiles in a month right so obviously we're going into this with stockpiles and trump has claimed that us munitions stockpiles have never been higher or better and that the war could go on forever very successfully just using these supplies but he didn't specify what munitions he was referring to and all of the information coming out suggests that we are like the seventh fleet has basically burned through its supply of advanced munitions there's been confirmation because the irgc claims they took out two fad batteries yeah and i don't take the irgc at their word but we did get local confirmation in at least one case that one of those batteries was disabled and it seems very likely based on some satellite imagery that that both were damaged how damaged they are is very hard to say we're talking generally the radar array that that you use for the missiles has been hit but we've only got like eight of these things these batteries are like not just our most best protection we would have from like submarine-based nuclear missiles but our best anti-missile systems period and we're in the process of peeling away the fad batteries that we've got in korea to bring into the middle east to continue to protect israel and to protect our forces and the fact that any of them may have been seriously damaged or lost is a serious problem for the united states i want to continue from that that cnn piece here they're interviewing a colonel mark gunzinger who's a retired military colonel and the director of future concepts and capability assessments at the mitchell institute for aerospace studies he basically made this claim that like since the united states has established air superiority early on in this conflict quote there's not such a need for the higher end very long-range standoff weapons uh i don't know that i agree with him on this because it seems like we're using some of those munitions now but he's primarily talking about we don't need to use as discriminating of weapon systems now instead of using our like super advanced precision guided munitions we can use stuff like jdams which we have a lot more of we have a huge stockpile of jdams of various sizes and small diameter bombs the problem is that these are not nearly as advanced in terms of their guidance capabilities and the civilian casualties related from using these are much much higher so we're hitting a point where we're running out of precision munitions and the it seems very clear that at least among military thinkers the attitude is that's fine because we'll just use these bigger weapons that kill more civilians and yeah that's what you should look forward to in the next stages of this conflict yeah talking of i guess the next stages of this conflict the uh the military religious freedom foundation is reporting that it's been flooded with complaints from troops whose officers believe the operation will bring about the end of days as we're told in the bible oh there you go yeah yeah uh here's a quotation from one of their non-commissioned officer clients quote this morning our commander opened up the combat readiness status briefing by urging us not to be afraid as to what is happening with our combat operations in iran right now he urged us to tell our troops this was all part of god's divine plan and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the book of revelation referring to armageddon and the imminent return of jesus christ he said that quote president trump has been anointed by jesus to light the signal fire in iran to cause armageddon and mark his return to earth i am not a big bible understander but garrison davis a regular you know resident bible person please comment if you want to i don't think this is good uh this is my take on that i don't think it's a great way to be going around foreign policy no it's not a good foreign policy blueprint it might be kind of made biblically accurate though i mean that you know that's the thing is that really good blueprint it is it is it is accurate though i was like trump does in fact match a number of descriptions of the antichrist and it is possible that what we're doing in iran ends in the apocalypse so you know my understanding is this hinge is on a certain color of cowl the red hypher this is the whole thing we had a breeding program we made it in texas it's kaffir yes yes this is this is one of the first the first like american like subculture things i have rincate he's from his one like when i got the internet at school you could go into the computer lab and look at stuff i learned about these people trying to make a red heifer right like uh yeah that will bring about the apocalypse this cow yeah fascinating stuff very normal very normal and that's all i've got hopefully uh send us pictures of your catalyst you've got one of the appropriate color and that'll be a sign that it's all over i mean things in iran do not seem to be winding down if anything they're holding or ramping up yeah on tuesday mark rubio said quote in the next few hours and days you're going to really begin to perceive a change in the scope and the intensity of these attacks as frankly the two most powerful air forces in the world take apart this terroristic regime and defang it on quote that by the way was also preceded immediately by him saying we're going to unleash chang which is a completely unhinged thing from the old old like anti-communist far right where they're like we're gonna unleash chang kai shak and he's gonna retake china and kill everyone so that's that's great that's that's fun that extremely normal yeah that's a that's a john bircher right there yeah yeah wow and after a closed door senate hearing briefing the senate on actions in iran senator blumenthal said quote i am more fearful than ever after this briefing that we may be putting boots on the ground yeah christ we have to you can't actually stop the regime without doing that yeah even the like trump model which is the syria model right of a relatively limited footprint with a partner force yeah it's still like an american people died in syria well and i i think they're also looking to libya right uh initially yeah we're hoping it would be something like that but the thing is in libya you already had a situation where there was a massive army a raid against the dictator yeah who was holding them back via air power so being able to stop the air power was able to was enough to sign the regime's death death warrant and obviously the failure of nato to do anything to help libya in the wake of that has been awful but it's totally different in iran like it's the iranian people the iranian like resistance the iranian protests had not taken territory they had not like swung large chunks of the iranian military the military and the regime were still in control of the country and nothing has changed in that regard so if you're going to knock out the regime you have to send in the fucking marines that's the only way the and that's i think what's gonna happen at some point yeah it's gonna be uh the next few days probably by the time you're hearing this by the way just as we're recording this hopefully this has left the news cycle several news outlets have published the kurdish paramilitary forces are streaming across the border into iran that's not true each of those groups who they're claiming are doing that have denied it there is going to be a lot of misinformation yeah in the next few weeks and you should be very careful about where you are sourcing your news yeah i i just wanted to make that very clear yeah this is the first war potentially major war that started while already in place was an entire system that monetized people getting disinformation about that war to go viral right yeah obviously that has impacted things in ukraine later and palestine and palestine too yeah but when the invasion started those were not like it really it's it came into being over what happened in palestine you're right garrison yeah but it's now in completely full form at the start of the conflict yeah yeah there's a whole like industry you know across many different countries yeah so misinformation to win money via the blue check system on twitter which is still used for you know news sourcing across the world in the case of breaking events so speaking of industry so one of the other consequences of this war has been effectively the end of trade and passage to the trade of formus which is extremely critical lifeline for the world economy i'm going to quote here from al jazeera quote a commander in iran's revolutionary guard corps said on monday that the straight was quote closed and that any vessel attempting to pass through the waterway would be set quote ablaze now per cmbc there's about 13 million barrels of oil a day that flows through the straight of formus it's 31 of all seawall and crude flow the total like impacted oil production and distribution from this is about it's about a fifth of the world's oil supply total that is being impacted by this liquefied natural gas is also being massively impacted because of yeah to place the places where a whole bunch of natural gas and oil are produced this is a very very significant blow to the world's energy supply and one of the reasons why even if you don't care like the u.s. doesn't about you know obliterating abrony and schoolgirls with bombs this war is a terrible idea because you're suddenly losing access to a fifth of the world's oil supply now if trump has repeatedly said that the straight is not open the rgc has repeatedly said that it is closed trump also yesterday that we're recording this on wednesday said that the u.s. will escort tankers if necessary through the straight with us navy ships the other major issue here is that no insurance company will ensure any ship going through this because why on earth would you do that and trump has also ordered the government to ensure these tankers and this has stopped the massive rise in oil prices a little bit that was happening at the beginning of the beginning of the conflict however i don't know why it stopped the rise in oil prices because this won't work you can't just escort oil tankers through the straight with american battleships and have them not like do you know how big an oil tanker is and how slow they are like i there's no way militarily that you can actually move oil tankers through here you just can't it's too easy to hit with literally any munition so the the the sort of american markets don't seem to have figured out that you obviously cannot escort oil tankers through the trade of promos where people have figured this out are the asian markets particularly south korea and thailand where both of their stock index has had their circuit breakers triggered which is the emergency system they have in place when the market is collapsing too fast all trading halts south korea's index lost 12.06 percent yesterday which is the single largest drop that the market has ever experienced oh yeah it's it's it's it's really bad the chinese indexes have been okay but both japan and taiwan were down between three and four percent we still also quite bad now south korea and thailand specifically the reason that these two countries are having just sort of apocalyptic market collapses is that these two countries are extremely reliant on imported oil and you know there's this tendency to think about oil as just liquid money and it's not you do actually have to use it to power things and a significant portion of the of both the tai and the south korean economy are sort of heavy industrial things that require this oil these countries are now in very dire straits and the only way that this could stop is if somehow trump wins the war very very quickly and to be able to reopen the strait which i don't think is particularly likely so this is probably just going to intensify yeah you could call it a dire strait ah garrison you've you've brought up my favorite band of which i am aware of one of their songs great band heard the one song of theirs i know one of the songs that has a slur in it there are better songs hey no but they stopped using the slur and more and more okay and more recent updates but also the slur was never it was never a slur directed at the the audience yeah they were talking from the perspective of a bigot insulting yeah it's a thing that's correct yeah so it's i think anyway yeah in terms of song swiss lures not the worst speaking of dire straits i'm cutting i'm cutting the white people off talking about slurs here are cutting it off speaking of being in dire straits spain in a well when i wrote this script i said a rare moment of bravery i should give them slightly more credit than that but in a moment of genuine bravery and principle the spanish government has refused to allow the us to use its air bases to conduct the war in iran yeah these are american air bases in spain this has led to a bunch of assets being moved out of spain trump has responded to this by i'm just going to quote out to zira um quote from out to zero he said he had told us he had told his secretary of the treasury scott best it to quote cut off all dealings with spain we're going to cut off all trade with spain we don't want anything to do with spain the president said the trump is taking away your yamona barico like you have to we have to stop this there will be no top up in america where else are we're going to get the highest quality smoked meats yeah your triton will that forever be worse uh it's not really possible to do this right because it's it's pain is in the e you and then yeah we don't have internal borders yeah it shouldn't be possible to do this i i think it's like probably i'm leaning towards about 95 five that trump just forgets about this and there's a five percent chance there's some completely hitherto unused unhinged national security like power that was passed by john woo specifically but i don't know we're back to calvin ball trade policy he's just saying stuff i was wrong last week they're just making shit up well and here's the thing like that this shows this may be optimistic is how different the climate is it like the social climate is in the united states as opposed during the iraq war where like if this has happened during the iraq war you would have had people like renaming spanish dishes freedom fucking whatever the fuck fries yeah you you would have had there would have been like a social there's not there's been no cultural backlash against spain in the united states that i that i've seen that has any kind of juice and you know and to say like one serious then before we wrap this up like the approval rating for this war is sub 50 percent right now yeah it's only going to get worse because wars or war approval ratings are always the highest when they first start it's already sub 50 everyone hates this i i want to wrap this up before we go to ads by saying the administration had also claimed that spain had because of the threat of economic pressure whatever had agreed to cooperate and the spanish government immediately said no we didn't what are you talking about yeah so they're just lying about stuff again it's great yeah whoo fantastic you know what else is great what's that guys america again this brief ad break before we return for even more news all right we are back two final stories to cover this episode last week the kansas state legislature passed a new law overriding governor laura kelly's veto invalidating state-issued drivers license with updated gender markers requiring quote kansas issued drivers license and identification cards reflect the credential holders sex at birth unquote after this law was passed the state sent letters to trans people informing them their license was now invalid effective immediately including to at least one trans person who did not change their gender marker but recently changed her legal name state officials say about 1700 license holders were affected the law also invalidates updated birth certificates and prohibits anyone born in kansas from updating the gender marker on state issued birth certificates and drivers license in the future this same law also prohibits trans people from using the public restrooms on government property that aligns with their gender and allows private citizens to sue someone suspected of being trans in the quote unquote wrong restroom in a government building for damages totaling $1,000 two trans kansans and the aclu have filed a lawsuit claiming the new law sp244 violates the kansas constitution's protections for personal autonomy privacy equality under the law due process and freedom of speech yep no great no it's obviously is a violation of all those things yeah i mean i think it's also just worth noting that this is part of a trend we've been seeing of just this is basically what used to be a whole bunch of different bills like compiled into one right this is like a bounty bill this is like a ban this is instead of having legislative fights over all the different elements they're just pushing them all through in one package which has been working for them very like clear like egregious violation of yeah of rights and now there's a now you have people in situation where they could have their passport being invalid their birth certificate being invalid and their state driver license being invalid yep it's a very precarious situation yeah that we will watch to see the fallout of in the next few weeks to months finally the texas primary election that happened on tuesday some big news coming out of that the republican senate primary was going to advance to a runoff election between incumbent john cornyn and attorney general ken paxton though this runoff could be disrupted because trump just signaled that he will endorse cornyn leading many to suspect that paxton may drop out of the race this is still unclear but it was a very close race between those two and one other person that was going to go to a runoff due to redistricting two democratic incumbents house representatives al green and christian menafee battled over a new district in a close race that will now also go to a runoff the same goes for representative julie johnson and former representative callan al red who dropped out of the senate race to run for this newly redrawn district neither of these two were able to reach a majority so that race will also head to a runoff incumbent dan crenshaw lost the primary yeah to republican challenger steve tothe who was backed by the party's far right and tucker carlson is significantly to the right of dan crenshaw yeah as fun as it is to see crenshaw go down he's getting replaced by someone that is actually worse it's not good it's just kind of funny yeah we've replaced hitler with hitler too yeah great things happening because he specifically had spoken out about some trump policies right like yeah he had gone more independent on some issues rather than like ketowing to the bending than the to the the current republican line and that opened him up to a tax from the right yeah but the big story of the night is the democratic senate primary in which texas state house rep james talerico is projected to be to us representative for texas jasmine crocket who previously told talerico that she would not run for the senate before entering the race late in december crocket did not concede the night of the election has since conceded but did not concede election night citing issues at voting precincts and dueling court orders that sowed confusion come election day republicans in dallas county and williamson county switched the rules from countywide centralized polling locations to an assigned precinct system where voters can only cast their ballots at one specific location after reports of people being turned away from their regular polling locations on election day and being told they had to travel to their assigned precinct to cast their ballot both crocket and talerico advocated to expand voting hours in these counties to compensate for the confusion and ensure all votes intended to be cast on election day would be counted judges in dallas and williamson county extended voting hours to nine and ten p.m respectively but later that night in a ruling just before eight thirty p.m the texas supreme court blocked the lower court's order and instructed dallas and williamson county to separate any ballots cast by voters who entered the line after seven p.m and marked them as provisional ballots after a request by attorney general ken paxton who claimed his office was not properly notified of the extended voting hours paul adams the dallas county election administrator confirmed that the separated ballots would not be counted pending further legal challenges at her election night watch party crocket said that she had quote no idea how it is that clerks are going to know who was in line by what time i can tell you now that people have been disenfranchised on quote on wednesday morning crocket did concede the race but told the new york times quote the democratic party should absolutely prepare for the worst and get some things litigated right now people will not turn out because of what's happened in my opinion especially if no one fights for their votes to be counted on quote it does feel a lot like uh the first decade of the century again like we got wars in the middle east we got people arguing about votes that should be counted not counted it's great so the total number of votes cast in the republican primary that are tallied so far at 95 percent of the votes in is 2,142,211 versus the democratic primary that's 2,308,836 slightly more democratic votes counted in the primary texas has open primaries apparently texas has open primaries yeah okay talarico was up nine points among white voters up 22 points among hispanic while crocket was up 23 points among black voters crocket was up eight points with biden voters and talarico up 32 points with sanders voters if you look at the 2020 presidential primary that gives you a little bit of a a peek into kind of what these two candidates represented with crocket serving on the kamala harris campaign definitely more of a k high ve esc candidate and talarico a little bit running off of the kind of bernie sanders progressive coattails a little but not coattails but like using that sort of playbook as more of like a relatable working class guy less of like an establishment democrat like like crocket sort of branded herself as talarico is a former school teacher who served in the state house since 2018 was fought against christian nationalism and a bill mandating the ten commandments be displayed in classrooms calling the bill unconstitutional unamerican and deeply un christian in his past legislation lowering the cost of prescription drugs he's like a progressive christian that's kind of i guess the best way to describe him as he yeah frequently went viral the past three years for clips of him you know arguing in the texas state a house you know arguing for progressive points of view while like quoting bible verses that sort of thing for this campaign of his he was running on affordability and cost of living that was the real focus of this campaign targeting the richest one percent and giant corporations making billionaires and corporations quote-unquote pay their fair share of taxes raising federal minimum wage to 15 dollars expanding child and earned income tax credits he's opposed to state legislation restricting gender affirming health care including for people under 18 in september right after he announced his candidacy talarico who's a member of the lgbt q caugas responded to a question about trans athletes like this i think it's interesting i've been in this race for five days and i've had a lot of interviews with national media no one's ever asked me about the cost of housing no one's asked me about the cost of prescription drugs no one's asked me about the cost of child care the only thing the media wants to ask me about are trans athletes and so what i would say is that the only minority destroying this country is the billionaires trans people are one percent of the population undocumented people are one percent of the population muslims are one percent of the population we are all focused on the wrong one percent trans people aren't taking away our health care undocumented people aren't defunding our schools muslims aren't cutting taxes for themselves and their rich friends it's the billionaires and their puppet politicians and so we need not only the media but all of us to focus on the real problem at hand hey it appeared like this was effective messaging it's a good response yeah yeah the only dangerous minority is so rich it has consistently actually been a popular yeah messaging the democrats have nonetheless shied away from yeah because that's who donates money yeah because they like the only minority they like because many of them are rich yeah others wish to be talarico supports regulating ai universal health care term limits for congress and stream court justices halting israel's illegal settlements restoring the talking only filibuster and banning gerrymandering and establishing independent redistricting talarico participated in the texas democrats protests against redistricting both in like 2021 and last year in 2025 where they fled texas yeah they ran on the holiday for a while on his campaign website he talks about advocating reform to make legal immigration easier and creating pathways to legalization for undocumented immigrants already long present as well as spouses and dreamers part of his immigration policy reads quote prioritize the deportation of criminals gang members and human traffickers not our neighbors who contribute to our communities pay taxes and pose no threat to our safety unquote part of where this sort of language i think falls apart is that when the trump administration claims that it's deporting gang members and criminals like what we saw yeah yeah when with people sent to ccott that also includes regular people that also includes our neighbors and i think that is that is one slight fault in this messaging it's going to be interesting with him running in the general now you know in texas where the border is a big issue there and a lot of his a lot of his immigration stuff definitely is is not going to at least currently is is not as far to the left as as some other progressive democrats and it's something that he is currently being pushed on especially after winning progressive advocates are pushing him on ice specifically as well as some stuff on israel and gaza tellerico is advocated to stop the sale of quote unquote offensive weapons to israel while still funding the iron dome and defense weapons talked about trying to find a way to make sure that defense weapons cannot be used offensively but he does recognize that gaza is an extremely important issue and said in interview quote one of the primary reasons the democratic party lost young voters in particular last election was our party's failure to recognize the moral disaster in gaza and i hope that we have leaders who recognize that mistake i think that's all i need to say regarding that the general is not until november and if it is a cornyn that will be a much a much harder race considering he's an incumbent versus you know paxton who has a lot of a lot of avenues for attack for someone like tallorico who can lean on his like christian charm to it attract voters both in rural areas as well as lean on his support among hispanic voters as demonstrated in the primary mia you have one final thing to add based on the primary elections in north carolina yeah yeah there were a bunch of primary elections in north carolina and i'm mentioning this because there was a series of north carolina democrats who voted with republicans to pass anti trans legislation over a veto from the governor and also voted with them on really horrifying like pro ice legislation and those people lost by cartoon margins we are talking margins that start at 30 percent go to 40 percent and one of these people lost their race by 50 percent geez so the anti trans candidates and the like i am pro ice racist candidates lost by like bath party numbers which i which i think is actually very encouraging because i think it's it's a sign of where people are right now where people are going even as the state is trying to do anti trans repression this has become a thing that is enough where if you are willing to like vote for this shit and make a bunch of trans people suffer you you will you will lose by you will lose by 40 in a primary unbelievable primaries tend to include more informed politically engaged voters and that is one of the things that engages people most right now specifically the ice stuff it's also more ideologically motivated voters and the right has made the far right has made use of this for decades to push the more moderate actual politicians stuff for the republican party further right because you can't win primaries without getting like appealing to the most extreme of them and there has not up until very recently been that kind of success with like far left positions not that i think basic respect for trans people ought to be far left but it's clearly not a centrist dim position yeah yeah apparently and i think that this is good i think it's it's a smart way to influence the direction of the party yeah yeah i want to close with there there's a slogan from chile that gets used in social movements constantly that goes roughly like chile is where neoliberalism was born and we're going to kill it here and i think this is sort of the start of potentially that in north carolina where well this isn't the start but hopefully we're seeing like the culmination of a whole bunch of ways of activism and organizing and mobilization that can kill this kind of anti-trans politics in the place where it was born the first bathroom bill so if you would like to email us with some tips on stories you can do so at coolzone tips at proton dot me that is not the email address to plug your book or ask if you could be on behind the bastards and if you do that i will block you put a trans girl on your couch we reported the news we reported the news hey we'll be back monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe it could happen here is a production of cool zone media for more podcast from cool zone media visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the i heart radio app apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts you can now find sources for it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions thanks for listening master any task with the all-electric forward e-transit custom limited with lower running cost for your business selected dealer stock is now available with zero percent apr on four-year forward options and a seven thousand pound customer saving until the end of march at participating dealers search for e-transit custom ready set forward finance subject to status this is an i heart podcast guaranteed human