It Could Happen Here Weekly 103

irony poisoned. You can get just as much social clout for losing thousands of dollars as you can for winning

thousands of dollars. In fact, there's an argument that there's more clout for lost porn than there is for like actually posting big gains obviously, like not like the healthiest or most wholesome community you could you could imagine, but you know, out of that plus COVID madness, plus stimulus checks and just general nihilism arose this kind of Frankenstein short squeeze play on game Stop that weirdly never actually happened, because the play just sort of turned into its own

self fulfilling thing that enough people believed in the idea of this short squeeze play that they just kept piling in and piling in, and suddenly like the short squeeze doesn't actually matter at all because there's enough critical mass flooding in that you just get this massive pump anyway, which convinces people that, oh, the squeeze is going on, because in the moment you don't actually know like what

mechanisms are driving the price movement. You just see number going up, and so more people kept piling in, piling in, piling in. I got a phone call from, you know, from a friend of mine who's like, hey, have you heard about the GameStop stuff? And I'm like, yes, I heard about it two days ago, So if you heard about it today, it's it's way too late.

in the future. And then you take those and you immediately sell them for their their present value, right, and your hope, your like play it like goal is that the value of that drops and then you are able to buy back an equivalent amount to repay the loan and have made a profit based on the gap between those two numbers.

is it. Well, you're borrowing it, you know, you're borrowing a thing, and thus there's the expectation that you'll pay some kind of like you know, borrowers fee akin to a kin to interest on like the value of the thing that you've borrowed, but like it's it's not interest on you know, like a housing loan where the interest and like where your payments all are geared towards paying off the loan. It's just kind of like, all right, you owe me five bucks every single month forever as

long as you're holding this. And so you know, if you're not paying attention, like, you need to be very actively managing these kinds of positions otherwise, like your borrowing fees will just eat up all of your profit.

initial game stock game stops. I'm going to keep doing that hype was driven by influencers, right, and that there's evidence based on kind of the US government's analysis of this that got published that like regulators are paying additional attention at increasing attention to the influences that that or to the impact that influencers can have here, because there's this concern that, especially working in groups, there's like an ability for people like this to disrupt the economy to

a significant extent a way that would affect like normal people.

so there was short interest in game Stop. There was, in fact a rec less amount of short interest in game Stop, but the price increase was so huge, the volume of participation was so big, so many people were jumping on this that the short interest closing their position. The actual like short squeeze portion of all of this is only like ten percent of the price movement. All the rest of it is just people fomoing in on like this thing.

and that obviously there's different kind of actions is but is that like there is going to come a point where, like the price of games stop stock will increase to such an insane some people say hundreds of millions, billions of dollars per share that it effectively allows all of these apes who have bought shares to hold the entire world economy hostage until they have their increasingly ourcane demands met, right, Yeah, that is the belief, and that.

and just say that. It's like just say this like, oh, the short squeeze never happened, Therefore it's still on the table, the short like the the end. You know, it hasn't

happened yet, therefore it can still potentially happen. And in fact, if we just like look at the trend line, like I bet since it hasn't happened, since it didn't happen, and the position that they held in December was so reckless, it's only gotten worse since, which means that they're getting which means that these short sellers must be getting desperate, which means they're going to be willing to engage in

whatever level of depraved criminal activity is necessary to protect themselves. Therefore, it's just getting more and more and more and more extreme. Therefore, when this finally goes off, it's not just going to be like, it's not just going to be a five hundred dollars price point, it's going to be a nuclear

explosion that's going to topple the entire economy. Yeah, and that's that's this like of logic and what they and it all comes from that, just like missing the fact that it's like, oh, it wasn't a short squeeze because it was mostly fomo. The short squeeze was buried under a mountain of fomo. Yeah, but so it wasn't a short sc It's like, yeah, it's all just like based in these like word games of like, ah, you said it, you know that the dumb and dumber. You know, it's like,

what are the odds a one in million? So you're saying there's a chance. It's like, well, yeah, that's not what I'm saying.

there's this other conspiracy. You're starting with this endpoint and then working backwards and like finding ways to explain the things that have happened within that framework, like the.

of stuff, is what I initially like. That's how when I was watching your documentary, I was like, Oh, it's this you know, this need to find this kind of like magical answer to the problem. And then I like interrogated that conclusion and was like, well, no, it's not. This is just the way people's brains work, right, Yeah, like we're pattern making. This isn't medieval pissant shit. They're no dumber than we are. Like, yeah, that's what this shows.

we will just invent it. And it's like I don't have the answer to that, but sign's point to yes.

lot of these people. The belief is that that I think is accurate at least this is what I got from your documentary. Maybe I was interpreting you wrong, is that most of these or many of these people are not believers. They're manipulating a group of people because there's money in it. And one of the tactics that you see used a lot is kind of faux humility. Right, I'm just a dumb ape. You shouldn't trust me. I'm

not qualified to give financial advice. But here's the secret history of the universe to invest your money here.

are absolutely true believers, like from the get go. Some of them, like a lot of them, are like soft believers, you know, you know where it's like they're not hardcore into it, you know, if you really pressed them, Like it's not motivating their their daily decisions. But what they're taking from it is like social reinforcement. That they've found a group of people who respond to them, who like their posts, who leave messages. It's like, oh man, this

blew my mind. I can't believe the system is like

this fragile. You know, my tits are jacked, lighting the fuse on the rocket ship, buying more moon tickets, you know, and they and they respond to that very socially, and and and out of that sort of soup of like reinforcing messages, it's really easy for people in those influencer positions to just kind of like hold conflicting like hold the conflicting beliefs of like, I know that this is impossible, but also so it is like fulfilling me socially to

say these things. I'll just I'll just juggle that inconsistency.

like the homeland. You could say, the way in which up votes and down votes work, and the way in which upvotes and down votes take you know, critical content people who are trying to induce some accuracy or you might even say sanity in the discussion, and that that gets pushed down and hidden after a certain point of time with enough down votes, as opposed to like the stuff that is fundamentally unhinged but is like utopian gets

up voted. It's it's the the physical, like the actual mechanics of how the site is structured to work enforce fund at a fundamental level, enforced group think consensus.

up voted. Yeah, because like there's this underline, there's this kind of just like implicit belief that people will recognize truth and will upvote truth, and thus up votes and down votes are are an accurate filter on reality, which is demonstrably not true.

to be misogynistic and just like swap your wife. And it turns out that, like, as we know, you make a joke like that often enough, you're eventually going to attract the people who are just straight up like, yeah, I hate my wife.

basically children's merchandise across the board. You know, what if we want to put what if we want to put the characters on blankets or bottles or cups or plates or party supplies or whatever. So these trademarks are just incredibly wide ranging across just merch Yeah. But the existence of these trademark applications and this LLC becomes the seed for Teddy the company. As this like the mechanism through which Ryan Cohen is going to collaborate with Apes in

order to trigger MOASS. Because I guess this is the important thing about the mythology. Apes believe Ryan Cohen is on their side, that he is, he is their inside man, he is working with them. He is as frustrated as they are that this hasn't happened yet. But for like arcane legal reasons. He needs to like he needs to operate like a like a clockmaker, you know, he has to do everything very delicately and indirectly, and like his

hand cannot be seen pushing on the scales. So they think that it's like that this becomes the thing that they view all of their all of their hopes and dreams into his Teddy llc that it's like, this is the thing that he's going to use as the mechanism to do this. He's going to like buy game Stop via Teddy. He's gonna buy maybe some other company via Teddy. Teddy's going to get bought in to, like is gonna get bought by game Stop, like one way or another.

There were like hundreds of competing theories all rooted in in this.

tweeted several Titanic references. James Cameron's Titanic was being re released this past February on a day that aligned with National Teddy Bear Day, and so two different communities of apes, for completely separate reasons, latched onto this idea of Teddy Day. It was Friday, February tenth, twenty twenty three.

They you know, no one talks about Teddy Day anymore except for the fact that like it, it had a brief Teddy Day two point zero as October second was like upcoming, because you know, ah, maybe it wasn't the tenth of February, it was the second of October, you know. And and sure like I'm willing to bet that when next February rolls around, like we'll we'll get Teddy Day three point zero.

the day comes and then there's always a reason. And fundamentally, because this becomes so much of someone's social life, because it becomes part of their emotional support network, because it's like fundamentally, you changes the way you talk, Like you learn so many new words that make it into your diction that like it's easier to just keep rolling the expected date ahead rather than like acknowledge that kind of fundamental hit to your self conception that admitting you got played would take.

same mechanism. So the great disappointment was like that's the event that caused the Seventh day Adventist to come into existence because it was like a expected date of the apocalypse of the Second Coming, Like yeah, didn't happen, and you end up with like this, then fragmentation of the aftermath, a bunch of people just bleed off. But you end

up with like a couple different factions. Ones who are like, ah, well, the date was like the date wasn't wrong per se, or like the idea wasn't wrong, just like the date was wrong, like maybe it's off by one hundred.

atheism is a movement really celebrating this. I think that does Like the the assumption that that means that like atheism is growing more popular has been kind of fundamentally inaccurate. I think what we're seeing and what this this is kind of evidence of, is that like non affiliation with an organized religion is more common than ever. People are rejecting organized, settled religion at a kind of unprecedented rate

that's certainly undeniable. That doesn't mean they're as they are still believe and this is an example, right right, This is people are creating. The Internet has given created a tremendous capacity to build religions, and that's what people are doing.

you start really digging into the history, it's like this is just this is always going on, This is always

boiling under the surface. You look at like Puritanism in America through a non like through just kind of like a human lens of like what you know about how people behave, and you suddenly start seeing that it's like, oh, they were just like in a constant, perpetual state of internal fragmentation as people had different ideas about like what was supposed to happen, what should happen, and just kind of like formed you know, cliques and factions, and sometimes

those factions got big enough to split off and then they lasted, you know, ten twenty thirty fifty years and then like either folded back into the main thing or or whatever. But this kind of like churn in in faith and belief is is just it's always there. It just in an organized, codified faith. It's a lot easier to lose track of it. Particularly from a historical perspective. It's a lot easier to just look at like the bigger picture and be like, ah, it was all the same, it was homogeneous.

that that would get them like exiled. You know, any any kind of like overt power grab would be would be antithetical to it. But so it's the it's and it's the same thing like in QAnon, if somebody anyone who's come out and been like I am q listen to me, gets immediately just like just demolished by the faithful because like it's it's antithetical to their whole thing

to have a really identifiable leader. And and the fact that there is no identifiable leader, that that the leader is mythological is is useful and beneficial to the to the organization. And those kinds of like those kinds of movements, they're not unique to the modern age, but the modern age has made them very easy to form, almost by accident.

non functional it has been in my entire life. And that is that is saying something like Congress has been non functional for my entire life. This is the worst it has ever been. And the reason this is the worst has ever been is that Kevin McCarthy, who is the now former Speaker of the House, was removed by a vote of no confidence on October third, which when this comes out, that will be exactly two weeks out.

And he is removed because he tried to cut a deal with the Democrats to avert a government shutdown untill the seventeenth, and he got the deal through.

we should go into specifically what hasn't happened before. And the thing that hasn't happened before is that no sitting speaker of the House dream their term, has ever been removed by a vote of no confidence, which is nuts because again, and I cannot emphasize this enough, for most of the two thousands, the Speaker of the House was a guy named Dennis Hastick, who was literally a pedophile, and he was not removed by a vote of no confidence.

So like, this is this is the level of you know, weirdness that we're in, like like literally the two hundred something year history of the US, this has never happened.

bad things, bad things happening there. That investigation got killed because the bourgeoisie uh protects its allies. But Comma, we do not Speaker of the House right now, so something I think, I guess we should also mention this. So there's like a there's no Speaker of the House. There's some guy they put in who's like, is not actually an acting Speaker of the House. The only thing he can do effectively is like make sure that there's vote

specifically on there being another Speaker of the House. Yeah, And this has thrown the entire American political system into chaos because with no Speaker of the House, the House of Representatives cannot pass bills. They can't do it, They

cannot pass any bills at all. And because of the way that the American system was designed, not having this one person shuts down the entire effectively shut it shuts down the entire legislative branch, right because you can't get anything passed in the Senate without also getting it ratified in the House. And this has just shut down effectively, like most of the American government outside of the like,

you know. I mean, so the executive branches and all of the departments stuff are self functioning, but there is no legislative branch right now, effectively, is what has happened, right I think maybe subcommittee meetings are still running, but they can't pass any bills, and this is both a blessing and a curse. Normally, this I think would just

be a curse. I don't know. Maybe right now this is probably the best possible time this could have happened, because the consequence of this has been the US has been unable to follow through on its most sort of just rapidly genocidal impulses about Palestine because again, the House literally cannot pass any bills until they figure this shit out.

So we haven't been able to send money to it Laziel, we haven't been able to send like God forbid, like we haven't been able to plenty troops, which I don't know if they I don't know if there was actually the political desire to do that anyways, But you know, the fact, the fact that there was no speaker in the immediate wake of the stuff that's been happening in Palestine means that you know, they've they've been restrained from just like glassing the entire Middle East, which is which

is good. The downside is that again, we have until November seventeenth to pass a funding bill to avert the government shutdown. And not only is there like no progress on a deal about that bill, like the American legislature is currently incapable of passing any bill, much less the spending bill. So things are going great in the American political system. And okay, so we should we should ask the question why is this happening? And there are both

sort of short and long answers to this question. Both of them effectively have the same route, which is that the Republican Party is a coalition. It's one that usually has pretty broadly compatible politics, but it is a coalition between different sectors of capital. So think, for example, you know, you have your different right wing like tech mogul billionaires,

right like Elon Musk or like Peter Thiel. But these people align on a lot of stuff, but they don't necessarily have the same interests as like a weapons manufacturer or like coke industries, or I mean just like you know, like one of the big sort of tensions, for example, is that the Republican Party has a lot of backing

among the financial sector. Uh, the financial sector has very little interest in conflict with China because they have an enormous amount of capital like tied up in Chinese firms.

There are a lot of other like people who have a lot of like like even this is this is a thing between Elon Musk and Peter Teel right or like Musk is kind of more pro China than like the average like Republican tech billionaire because he has a bunch of contracts in a giant factory in China and so so okay, so this is this is a coalition

between different segments of capital who disagree. This is also a coalition between different like right wing social movements who are also you know, a very powerful part of the party. You have evangelical stuff. But I mean, you know, the consequence of this, and the consequence of the sort of shift right of American politics has been you now have this party where there are like libertarians alongside neocons, you have more moderate conservatives, and you have basic people who

are effectively neo Nazis. And the fact that the coalition is like this now, the fact that it is genuinely more so than it's been in a long time, a very broad and diverse coalition. This has made the House

of Representatives effectively unmanageable. Okay, and this has been a real issue in the Republican Party for a while now, partially because you know, and this is this is why we're getting the government shutdown stuff, like a big part of Republican strategy for the last decade, basically since Obama took office, has just been shutting down the government and doing art obstructionism, so you know, nothing can get done at waitgre have you have you been Do you remember

the last government shut down?

down for a long time. But there's a real problem with this, which is that this political strategy encourages, effectively the it encourages creating chaos, right, and this is something that Trump has been very good at sort of exploiting. But it also means that there's now this like qudra of politicos who've come up who are like incredibly right wing and effectively the only thing they know how to do is obstructing anything from functioning. And this is what

McCarthy ran into. He ran into Gates and his sort of like band of Mary I don't know, I was gonna call him a band of Mary weirdos, but that's way too complimentary. His band of like absolute fanatics. And the real issue here is that, Okay, so there's currently two vacant seats in the House, so this means right now, to win a vote in the full House. To become a Speaker of the House, you need two hundred and

seventeen votes. Sorry, hold on, there's new shit happening, like right now, McCarthy thinks that Jim Jordan has two hundred and seventeen votes. I don't know if I believe him. I don't know. Well, I'll just explain what's happening now and then we'll put that at the end.

is unbelievably difficult. McCarthy was able to do this because he pulled votes from the far right by like promising things like impeaching Biden and stuff like that, and also sort of cutting cutting his own deals with people like Marjorie Taylor Green who like and is And this is the other thing about about this impiacement vote is that it's not actually a purely ideological lines like far right versus moderate vote, because.

And to see like divisions over over this vote is certainly an interesting aspect of you know, possible fractures within the even the extreme contingent of the Republican Party.

about the Freedom Caucus in a little bit. But you have to, like you're at a point where you're trying to appease so many different groups of people who all have kind of competing agendas, who also just have like personal beef with each other. And as of right now time of recording, which is two pm Pacific time on Friday, no one has been able to actually pull together this vote. We're gonna take an ad break, and then we're.

so McCarthy is ousted. The problem immediately is that no one has any where close to enough votes to replace him, like like and when I say no, what like McCarthy McCarthy went down by he lost eight votes from the Republicans.

else are these like sellouts to work with the Democrats. Yeah, and he's he's also been trying so so Gates's preferred candidate is a guy named Jim Jordan. Jim Jordan is the found he was the founding head of the powerful far right Freedom Caucus, and he's a really he's a real piece of work. He's mad.

like that kind of very very rote with politics. His his original opponent was Steve Scalise, who is a kind of semi McCarthy ally kind of and you will see him described as being more moderate than than Jim Jordan, and that is maybe kind of true in the sense that like he's being back in the fact that like like Jim Jordan is being backed by like Marjorie Terry Green, Matt Gates and like Donald Trump. This is after Trump gave up his bid to like become speak of house himself.

given a speech at a rally for an organization ran by David Duke would immediately be disqualifying. But you know, no, like you can just do that. You can do that and you get to be a moderate in twenty twenty three. But the problem with the problem Scalisee has is that

Sclezi's problem isn't that again like clan bullshit. It's the fact that the way that votes for the Speaker of the House work is that So there's an internal blind vote inside of the inside of the Republican Party where each each each representative gets to anonymously vote like each a problem representative gets to a anonymously vote for their

preferred candidates. So Jim Jordan like kind of narrowly loses out to Scalise in the first route in the first vote, so he loses one hundred and thirteen to ninety nine, and so Scalise comes out as the guy who's the nominee for the Republicans.

now out of the race. What has been so the developments Literally as we are recording this, Jim Jordan has won a vote to become like the next he's the next person to vote because he was running against just

a fucking clown. Sorry I'm being offensive to clowns. He's just like a nobody, like just like some dipshit Republicans like picked off off the street, right, like this is where we're at, like that there's no one like if if Jim, if Jim Jordan can't do this, like there's like I don't know, like you would like bring McCarthy back, Like there's nothing he like Jordan. Jim Jordan's like the last even semi serious political figure of the Republican Party

who could even conceivably do this. So Jim Jordan has won the vote inside the Republican Party. However, come and and also the other important thing that happened literally as we were recording, is that he's been he's been endorsed by McCarthy now, which is kind of a big deal. McCarthy has said publicly that he thinks that Jim Jordan has the votes. I don't believe him, and I don't believe him because immediately after he said that, it came out that Jim Jordan is sixty vote short on the

floor of the House, sixty six zero. He is screwed. There's no way, like he has to get through sixty sixty votes and there's no way. I I don't see a path for him to do this, even even with McCarthy's support, Like, I don't, I don't think it's a

way for him to do this. As a time of recording, the thing that has happened is that the Republicans have all gone home because they get out at five, and he's going to try to spend the weekends like building up support, trying to build up enough votes in the House to like win speakership.

the executives. If we cannot come the executive. If we can not go the executive, the judiciary will fall by itself. Yeah.

So I guess there's that, But I don't know. Our government is a joke, yeah, and like and I guess I guess. The last thing I want to say is I want to invite all of you, everyone is listening to this, to look at these absolute numbskulls, Like, look at what they're doing right now. They can't even pick the one guy who is necessary for the entire legislative branch to function. And I want you to ask yourself,

could we do this? Could like any of you and like your neighbors and your friends, run a political system better than this, because I bet the answer is yes.

speech addressing Palestinians inside Gaza. A part of the official English translation of the speech reads, quote, all of the places which Hamas is deployed, hiding and operating in that to wicked city, we will turn them into rubble. I say to the residents of Gaza, leave now, because we will operate forcefully everywhere.

That's about twenty five percent of the Palestinian population. Many sought refuge in crowded United Nations shelters set up in schools, but even those shelters and hospitals were attacked by air Last Friday, October thirteenth, Israel issued a military order for all citizens in northern Gaza, including Gaza City, to evacuate their homes within a twenty four hour period in apparent preparation of a major ground assault on the besieged enclave.

Over one million Palestinians live in this area. It's almost half the population of Gaza. In between bombings, Israeli military aircraft dropped thousands of leaflets into Gaza City advising civilians to immediately leave their homes and the un shelters, but not to actually try and leave Gaza, as the leaflet warned that if anyone approached the Israel Gaza security wall, they would quote expose themselves to death unquote. Israel laid out just a few roads that it was supposed to

be quote unquote safe to travel southbound. Thousands of people in a northern Gaza began to flee towards the strip's southern half on Friday morning, but as they were following Israel's orders, civilian convoys transporting Palestinian families out of Gaza City were bombed by the Israeli military at three different

points along the evacuation route. At least seventy people were killed, with hundreds more injured by the Israeli airstrikes as they were trying to follow Israel's impossible order to evacuate everyone from their homes in just twenty four hours between Netanyahu's speech and the evacuation order of northern Gaza. This leaves people questioning where exactly are these people supposed to go in Gaza told the Associated Press quote, we can't flee

because anywhere you go, you are bombed. Unquote. Gaza isn't that big. It's only twenty five miles long, and it's completely surrounded by Israel and the Mediterranean Sea save for a small section on the southern tip, which borders Egypt with Israel, sealing off access to Gaza. The only way in or out is the Rafa Border Crossing, located at the southern end of the strip, bordering Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

The Rafa Crossing is a critical passage for humanitarian aid and serves as a vital gateway between Gaza and the outside world. One of the very first targets of Israeli bombing this month was the Rafa Border crossing between Gaza and Egypt. It was targeted by three air raids in a twenty four hour period, severely damaging the crossing, preventing it from operating and resulting in fatalities. There's video and audio of the bombings where you hear hundreds of people

make a singular scream. It's pretty gruesome. With Israel undergoing a quote unquote complete siege of Gaza, this crossing was the only way to send humanitarian supplies into the Strip and to let willing refugees flee the assault. The Egyptian Foreign Minister has said that Israel has yet to allow the reopening of the crossing. Egypt is expected to assist in delivering humanitarian aid to Palestinians and the enclave, but it has rejected proposals to accept fleeing Palestinians into its borders.

Both Egypt and Israel operate a blockade of Gaza to strictly control the passage of people and supplies going in and out of the Strip. There's no freedom of movement to enter or leave Gaza. Even when there's not a

declared war. One can't simply leave Gaza. There is no Gaza airport, at least not since two US and two Historically, the Rafa border crossing into the Egyptian Peninsula was only open to the public very sporadically, and often for very narrowly defined categories such as medical patients, religious pilgrims, foreign residents, or residents of Gaza with foreign visas or passports. But I don't have to tell you how hard it is

to leave Gaza even when there's not a war. Because late last year, we interviewed two Palestinians for a still upcoming episode that's being worked on. During the interview, they touched on their own experiences escaping Gaza. So we're going to play some of that interview for this episode, and I'll jump in occasionally to add some context. So here is Ahmed Matar and Abdullah al Casabre, athletes from a PK Gaza, one of the most recognized parker teams in the world.

gether city is something really really hard. And even though it's about having the business about it, traveling outside Gaza something else. This is also other completely different story. But we could manage that, and I've been here in Italy. I came to participate in Sishida. First of all, me and my friend we managed to get shing a visa and it was just for five days. And now I'm here in Italy for almost eleven months. In the other city.

You when you were there, it is not you don't really feel free as free, you know, because you're surrounded all the time by so many obstacutes, you know, which is which is really crazy and it drives even though because we were really kids and we didn't have a really good childhood somehow.

And that was before two thousand and five. That was like since I was four years I could remember all of that moments where the tanks are crossing our road and we were seeing that I attacks happening between people together, and bombs and flights and drones and and that's something that for sure affects us as a kid, that we we get the far whenever we see some bombs and just we want to hide from the bombs and we

want to be close to the family. For me, all of these things that happened around me affected me that I wanted to be that guy who would like to enjoy life. In the same time, Gaza was a place that we had the situation, but we are the psychologically or how is it called, Like when you are affected by the situation where you know that you are you can be dead at a moment, or it can get a bump close to you any moment, or someone close to you who die.

not really easy for anyone to protect the others. You know, no one able to you know, to do that. That's something affected us for sure, like because we we we we grown up in such things like that. Maybe for me an hour, if you were talking about this is maybe something usual, which is something normal, because I really

good used to it somehow, which is not normal. I mean it should have been normal for anyone, but for us, you know, we could it kind of normal because it's kind of we used to and now when I really because before I was really kids, so I didn't know what but it's really going on. I was really terrified and I was really scared, and I didn't know what

is really going to happen. But now when I'm kind of an adult and I know what is really going on and I see the kids when when because for example, the last four especially when I'm even outside, guess that it's completely completely different, you know, because when you're inside Gaza with your family and your friends top apply, it's

really different. But now when I can see how the kids they are screaming, how the kids they they they have this kind of feeling, you know that you know, they are really ter fired with the pomps because they are sneaks to them. So I can really myself and I just go through back, you know, the.

parker competitions. P k Gaza was invited to the Arabian TV show Arabs Got Talent, but they were unable to go on the program due to difficulties traveling outside Gaza. During this time period, the Rafa border crossing into Egypt was only open around six times a year and for

only a few days. To catch a flight out of Egypt, you need to have all of your proper paperwork, tickets, and a valid visa which lines up perfectly for when the Rafa border crossing happens to be open, and you have to also hope that you're not in the back of the line to get through the border crossing because they only let a certain number of people through each day.

Ahmed was invited to participate in the Red Bull Parker Challenge in China and even successfully got a visa to travel, but wasn't able to leave Gaza because the Rafa border crossing was closed during the timeframe when the visa was valid.

The US based World Free Running and Parker Federation tried to help Ahmed travel to the United States to participate in the wfpf's twenty sixteen competition in Las Vegas, but Ahmed was unable to get an American travel visa due to long wait times to use the Northern border crossing into Jerusalem, and even if you did manage to get into Israel, it was quite difficult to receive a US

travel visa as applicants were frequently denied. A park Ori Gym in Italy frequently invited Ahmed to participate in their summer and winter events, but the Italian embassy denied requests for a travel visa three times. In late twenty sixteen, Ahmed got invited to the Air Whip Parkour Challenge in Sweden, and with the help of some Swedish friends, he was

able to secure a travel visa in just two weeks. Unfortunately, when Ahmed got the visa, the Rafa crossing was closed, but by pure luck, just one day later it was announced that the crossing would be reopening. When he went to the crossing, he learned that there were thirty thousand people in line in front of him. With the crossing only set to be opened briefly and the temporary visa

set to expire, it was not looking great. After a very challenging series of events that Ahmed is about to explain, he was able to get to Sweden and just last year he started in a play about his own life and his journey traveling from Gaza to Sweden.

was the biggest part of the play. That yeah, talking exactly about how it is to face the visa embassy, Egyptian control, Egyptian security when we get out of Gaza, that they have to also a Palestinian side that they have to interview. Was every like I have if I

have the visa. Let's say I got the visa after some tries, then I have to apply for the trouble which I have to stand in the queue behind all of that people who already applied before me, which is imagine nine thirty one thousand, Mike, you number is thirty thousand. Then I have to wait. And okay, let's say I got in front of all of that people and today I am here in the Palestinian side. Then this Palestinian side, then RAPA orders have to interview me and check all

why do I need to travel? Show me your documents if I have any mistaken my documents, and I go back to Gaza. Even if all my documents, I have the vision and everything. And then if you don't want me to travel, then I have to stay in Gaza. Okay, let's say I did best the Palestinian side. I am in the Egyptian security side, and there one time the Egyptian security sent me back to Gaza after waiting. I have the visa and I was like, no, what are you going to do? I'm going to do parkour. I

have a poor competition. Now what is parkour?

expire in twenty days. And if I don't travel in this twenty days, my visa will expire, and then I cannot travel with him. And the only thing I had to do was like going to the crossing the first day with my father. He went with me and we just stand there in front of the crossing. It's you know, there is a control, there is a list with names that you cannot really cross if you don't get any help. So I go there and then we just waited around

six hours, me and my father. Then the sunset came and good dark, and then he was like, I cannot do anything. We have to go back, and then we went back home. The day after my fight, tell my father list can we go, I have to travel, I have the visa. I just will explore. And then he was like, well, I cannot do anything. He don't know what he will do, my father. So I told him, okay, I will go for the guy. We have a guy close to us, like let's say my neighbor, but he's

a far neighbor. And he was the manager of the crossings between us, like managing of coordinating the visas or like the last between US and Egypt. So he can really do whatever he wants. He can enter Egypt whenever he wants. He's a very friend between Egyptians. So he's the manager of the christ he's the boss. So I go to him and I wait him outside his car. Like so, I was close to his car waiting him to get out of his home. I know he goes

to his work around eight in the morning. Then I wake up at seven in the morning and I go there waiting him to come to his car. I see his car. Then I was really happy that he did not leave to his work, and I knew that he's still there and I was waiting waiting, and then he came and then I show him my visa and I really have to travel the competition and they have to join this competition. And then he was like, okay, but do you have the Q number? Yes, but I am

the last in the list. Okay, but how will we do? I cannot tell you, but I have already. I told him I have already been into Egypt before, but the Egyptian security sent me back to Gaza and he told me, do you have the registration of that the time you travel? And I told him yes, and did have that time and it was okay, follow me to the crossing. I told him, yeah, but I can I go with you in your car so you don't forget me when you go there. Because he's very like beoble just run after

him and a crossing mariandn there. I had to tell me I want to go with you, and he said yes, okay, you can come with me. And then he told me, but you cannot stop. I told him, can I stop her and say goodbye to my family first? Because they did not know that I will travel. I just took a very small bag with me in case I really had like a tack bag with me and he said yeah, but you cannot stop. I have to go now. And

then I was okay. I called my mom, Mom, he's going to help me, and but I cannot stop say goodbye. And then yeah, I went to the crossing and he put me into like a viv that I had to go like in a very special past that was just five people in it. And I was very like respected by the control there and there was like I got

all the way today to Egypt. And in Egypt, I really met the same guy that he also asked me about parkour and he was like, oh you And then my friend, the guy, the manager of the crossing told me I show him what parkour is. I really had to go slept for him. I did a workster in that room where he the control chick and I was oh wow, so cool. Okay, here is the stamp enter to Egypt. But I had to go into that airport.

He did not know. You know, the Egyptian don't understand the visa, like if if it's in the visa, it says that it's gonna be valid in this day, if it's valid in this like imagine I get the visa today but it's not valid yet. But the crossing is opened today and tomorrow and the day after I have to travel in these three days, then the crossing will close for another six months, so I had to travel in them days otherwise I will lose my visa. So

my visa was not valid at that time. I traveled from Kasas, so he thought that it's valid.

has built a life for himself in Sweden. He's been teaching parkour classes there for years now. In fact, that's how the play came about. The mother of one of his students is a theater director and she became interested in his story. By his account, life is much better for him now, but he still is not free to see his own family or to go back to his original home. Getting into Gaza is almost as hard as getting out of Gaza.

Abdullah also had to travel through Egypt and was forced to stay in a small present cell for three days without food or water. Once he got to the Cairo airport, the German airline he was booked on refused to accept his paperwork because they didn't want the responsibility of stamping his passport with the alternative of just going back to Gaza. Abdullah was able to find a manager of sorts and explain his situation with the travel visa and needing to

go to this film premiere or this Parkhorp thing. You know, it's not the easiest thing to explain, not everyone knows what parkhor is, but the manager was sympathetic, and then, just like what happened with Abed, they requested a Parkourt demonstration to see if this guy was actually telling the truth.

So the already exhausted Abdullah did a backflip in the airport as he was recovering from the COVID vaccine, and then the manager, seemingly satisfied, transferred him from this German airline to an Egyptian airline and he was able to make it to Italy and escape the prison of Gaza.

free yet. I mean, yeah, I will get the Swedish passport soon. I don't know when, but I'm sure it's not more than six months from now, because I have been applying. I have applied six months ago and it's usually not more than a year to get the decity. And usually it's accepted if you have everything correct in the country, like if you're legal and you pay attacks working, you're studying and another language, I'm good there, Just like I have to wait so in the end I will

be able to meet them. I would not be able to I would not say I will be free to enter Gazza whenever I want, because yeah, to enter gas at the moment I hear from people, it takes like three to four days and you suffer in the way, just like you have to stay in the car these three days and every thousand kilometers one thousand meters to get to stop by a control like a road control that they need to check everything you have, every bag you have take it out in the road and you

have put it back by yourself, and then the car continues another another control, and then in the end you arrive like Gaza and you say this is the worst part of my trouble because because they don't want to do it again, they don't want to get together and suffer the same way again and the same to get out of Gaza. To get out of Gaza. I mean, if I have the Swedish passport, for sure I will have I will have the best trouble from Gaza without worrying about getting a pieza or not. But in the

same time, yeah, I need to wait an aqueue. When well I traveled, When I will be able to travel from Gaza, is it like going to be one month, two months, three months, because it's like thousands of people who want to travel, and it just they allow five hundred people a day and that's maximum. And then I don't allow any more of that people. And then also

they they closed the crossing at any moment. And I remember the time I traveled from Gaza, was the crossing was closed for six months to three six months and it was none it was not open at all, and there was start thirty one thousand people in the front of me in the queue, thirty one thousand, So I imagine like I was the last person in the queue and they have to wait all of these people to travel, and the crossing was open just the three days every

three months. That means like in this three days, it's one thousand, five hundred. When is the rest gonna travel? When will I have to travel? And imagine you have a visa that is valid for like ten days. If you get the visa just for everything in Europe that is just three days, and then you get the visa for ten days, and then if you don't travel in that ten days, your visa get expired, and then you have to apply for a new visa. And then after that you have to wait because if you get refused visa,

you cannot apply directly. You have to wait six three to six months and then you can apply for the new visa. So it's really terrible, Like I don't want to go through all of that process again. And that's why I decide stay in Sweden and work in Sweden and get a Swedish citizenship where I can travel freely without worrying about oh, getting a visa or not. And because till now, because I'm not Swedish, I have to think about getting a visa or not. Will I be

refuse vicea or not? And even Egyptian embassy refuse my visa and they did not even answer me. Call them every day, did I give the visa? When will you give me the visa? I go to their office here in Stockholm. The end, they're like, oh, you have to call us, send us an email, and I call and send the in. Oh, we will call you when you get the visa. But will you call me that if I don't get the visa. No, we will call you

when you get the visa, Okay. And then they said to my mom, I'm not coming to the Egypt.

I got an event in two thousand thirteen and USA fight did me like for Las Vegas, and WFTF invited me for an event in Las Vegas that I could not make, and also Germany Hamburg and Hanover invited me. And there was many events that I could not make. In the end, I could make it to airwork. But the first year of the airwork like they invited me twenty fifteen and I applied for the visa, I did not get it. And then the year after twenty sixteen and got the visa because I had the help also

from another private invitation. So I got double invitations that it made it stronger for the consulate and the embassy in jury residence the visa and it was like yeah, it was twenty one days visa and directly when I arrived with and I was like, my friends knew I don't want to go back. So they taught me to the migration office in Helsingborg in Malmo and there I extended my visa for six months first and in that

six months I wanted to work and stay here. So I started to look for a job and I started my own job actually like start to work with hardcore or myself, like making classes that I was teaching in English, and I had one of the students translating to the kids in Swedish, so he was getting three classes. It was tough at that time. I was like it was hard for him also to translate because he was not more than thirteen years old, who was so shy and everything,

and I was forest forrest. You learned the Swedish language because of that, because I wanted to work, and I just started to know hands, head and the food, knee, and it was easy because it was similar to English. And by the time the kids had taught me to speak Swedish at the moment because it was the only way I learned Swedish. It was my way to learn

Swedish was I was the kids all the time. The kids language was the easiest to take, like to back out, because the kids have a simple language that you can really learn it much faster than talking with another that talked really fast and talking very advanced Swedish. I dreamed to travel from Gaza and then I made it. I did travel from Gaza and then you think, Okay, what do I want to make next? And then I I want to work with Packport, and then I started working

with Pakport. I never expected that I would be in the biggest theater stage in Sweden. A then I am here in the biggest theater stage in Sweden. That's just like being able to come and watch my store and watch me perform in Parkour and telling nice story to the It's like I never think thought about it, but just Parkour brought back to me.

Gaza dot com. Abdullah is still in Italy and is studying to become an English teacher, and just last February, Ahmed and Abdullah were able to see each other in person. For the first time in quite a while. The documentary that Abdullah is in is called One More Jump. It's about very similar questions on whether it's worth it to stay and fight for your country or try to escape and fulfill your dreams. Thank you once again to Abdullah and off Ed for talking with us. I'll link their

social medias in the show notes below. See you on the other side.

to Tel Aviv for the first time. And you know, obviously I was very familiar with it, like visit every summer, and you know, grew up in in our grandparents' house, both of whom were Iraqi Jews who immigrated to Israel in the early fifties. And so yeah, so when I moved there in eighth grade, I was completely pretty much a shock in terms of what I was used to in New York. Obviously, I had friends from many different walks of life, many different backgrounds here. I was very

used to that, right. I didn't grew up in you know, a very staunch Jewish community. I had Jewish friends, but I didn't solely have Jewish friends, and so that's what I loved, that's what I embraced. But when I moved to Israel, it was very jarring. You know, I had studied in Hebrew for the first time, and you know, everything that we studied in school was pertaining to the Jewish identity. So every kind of history class, you know, you'd study about the Roman Empire and the Jewish people.

You'd study about, you know, ancient Greece and the Jewish people. And that's okay to learn about Jewish identity, but intertwining it with every aspect of the school curriculum and really thinking about the persecure really kind of hammering home this notion of persecution. Really kind of understanding how you know, And again, I think it's important to understand your history and history in general, but I think that kind of introducing this notion of persecution as a tactic to retraumatize

people that aren't directly experiencing the trauma. Right, So, everyone in the world learns about the Holocaust, but did you know that in Israel, Holocaust Remembrance Day isn't on the same day as the rest of the world's Holocaust Remembrance Day because they want to own their own kind of version of the Holocaust Remembrance Day, right, And so you know, when you think about the Holocaust, you think about other holocausts, other genocides that have happened, and Israel's failure to recognize

those genocides like the Armenian genocide, right, and the fact that you know, many people don't know, but you know, throughout history Israel has armed genocidal forces with Israeli made weapons to you know, support imperialist motives and colonialist powers around the world. So you know, even even now with what's happening in Armenia with the Iserbaijani's right, Israel's on the wrong side of that equation, right, And so it's never been about standing with the side of the oppressed

for Israel. It's never been about, you know, ensuring that what happens when they say never again, actually never again, never happens again to anyone around the world. Right. Think about their policies, the racist policies around refugees, right. I think people don't understand.

of people are used to. And also bringing it back to the events of the last ten days or eleven days, at this point, I think, you know, I've always kind of looked at and identified with the Palestinian struggle, right, And I've always seen it as a human rights struggle, right, and you know, as such, and as many well regarded activists and thinkers and intellectuals have always talked about the unification of all the struggles of the oppress, and that's

always always arrived at the identification with this struggle for the Palestinian people. I've also felt, you know, by virtue of this se this imposed identity of you know, Israeli, I've always felt directly responsible for the oppression of the Palestinian people, even though I've never done anything myself to champion or perpetuate that oppression. I've always worked against it

from a very very young age. Now, people always ask me, you know, kind of annoying questions like, you know, why do you care so much about the Palestinians when so many people in the world are suffering. And the answer to that question is I care about all suffering. But this is something that the government that supposedly represents me, that the entity that supposedly represents me is directly perpetrating, and frankly, after going to many protests in New York

and in Israel itself. I've realized that this is the most important human rights struggle of our generation for sure, but of modern times because it stands for all of it's essentially the last beacon of direct colonialism. Right. We

all know how kind of neocolonialism works. I mean maybe we do when we don't, but neocolonialism, through you know, different coupitalist structures, right, America has been able to perpetrate neocolonialism without actually having to occupy other people, you know, save for Iraq for almost twenty years, but or fifteen years or whatever, it was a very long time. But Israel is directly and physically occupying on other people, and they have been for the last seventy five years, right

officially for the last seventy five years. And that's been a constant, Right, It's not, hey, you know, here's a country and let's you know fight, let's continue our kind of battle in that way. It's been it's always been. If you're a scholar of Israeli history, of Zionist history, you always you start understanding that the goal was to take over all of Judaea and Samara, right, and that's kind of how the settler government that Netanyahu has in

power has been speaking for years. Right. I'm really upset and really kind of frustrated by the way that the Western media has been portraying what's happening over the last eleven days, because even Israeli media Halitz, which is an Israeli newspaper, which is very prominent one right, isn't portraying it the way that the Western media is portraying it. Right, they're criticizing the Netanyahu. There's so many people in Israel that are scared, right, All the leftists are scared. They're

being persecuted. They're signal groups doxing friends of mine, people literally fighting for human rights, they're doxing them. Islaelfly he's orthodox reporter that's been staunchly pro Palestinian and he's a very prominent member of the press. Angry mob of right winging extremists try to knock down his door the other day and he had to escape from the back door and run away, so they don't, you know, potentially kill him, right, And so these voices are being silenced in Israel. No

one is talking about that. Everyone in the West is beating the drums of war. The media is supporting that. We've seen on the kind of a micro but tragic level, what happened to that six year old kid that was stobbed to death by someone just because of the anti Islamic, anti Palestinian rhetoric that's being perpetrated. And so everyone's kind of losing their shit as all of a sudden, everyone's saying the same thing because everyone is being pushed to

justify this war. But people are starting to wake up, right, The UN's woken up in very very slowly. People are starting to wake up because they're seeing that genocide is actually being committed and so you can't throw your full weight behind genocide. But they're walking it back too slowly. And the people that I'm disappointed by are people that are supposedly smart, spewing complete nonsense rhetoric about two sides. Right.

I struggled, Right, this is important. I struggled. I know people who were killed in the Hamas attack personally and intimately know them. Right. You know my ex girlfriend's best friend was killed, right, She's We've hung out many, many, many times. She was a very sweet, very kind person. We know an activist who was literally because people don't understand. And this is for a lot of the kind of pro Palestinians that that and I completely empathize, and I

understand why people believe what they believe. Believe me, but this is for a lot of the pro Palestinians that you know immediately called all of them settlers, right, And I think it's important to distinguish because if there's ever going to be a path forward in this mess, we have to offer a new rhetoric that deconstructs the nationalist ideologies. Okay, I don't put the Palestinian flag or say free Palestine,

which I do as a nationalist ideology. I say that as a deconstruction of nationalism, as a call to freedom for all, right, though oppressed as well as the oppressor. Right, if you actually read everyone's quoting, everyone's quoting Phenonen, right, everyone's quoting all these revolutionaries, if you actually read the material that they said. Chae Gavari even said the true revolutionary is guided by deep with deep feelings of love

in their heart. And he said this at the risk of sounding absurd, he said that direct quote the people perpetuating in Israel. I can say this from a first hand account. I know very good people that are guided by nationalists and fascist ideologies. However, they've been manipulated, they've been lied to, They've they're fed propaganda twenty four to seven through the news and the sentiment in Israel right now. And I can tell you this, I'm getting messages from

people they think everyone is trying to kill Jews. That's what they believe, That's what they've been told. They think this is armageddon for the Jewish people. That's what the media narrative is in Israel. Okay, in spite of the fact that there are many people that are against what's happening, there are many people that directly blame Netanyahu for this, but they're being scared to believe that they're being going to be attacked on all fronts, and they have to

do everything they can to neutralize the threats. Okay, that is the survival kind of That is a fact. Does that mean that every single person in Israel is a terrible human being, as evil as some people say, No, that is not true at all. Right, And my point is, and what a lot of the revolutionaries said, right. Palo Freer in The Pedagogy of the Oppressed said in the

process of dehumanization, the oppressor dehumanizes himself. Putting that aside, though, I think that you know, for me, I see I know people that died, it was very difficult for me the post in the first two days. I think there were some problematic justifications for the massacre that didn't sit well with me because I'm a humanist. But in the same token, right, I think that I understand the context. I think it behooves us to understand the context.

the aggressive, right. And that's not to say in the same breath that terrible things happen to amazing people there.

because that's where they live, they work with. You know, organizations at GAZA like acknowledge that, right, understand the complexity saying hey, you guys are all settlers. That's just dumb. It's not factually true. Their grandparents were, their great grandparents were one hundred percent. But now their generations and generations of people, right, just like in their generations and generations of people that descended, Are they to be held accountable

for the actions of their ancestors. Doesn't make any sense. They should be held accountable for actions that they take now, for sure, right, holding your government accountable, you know, thinking about an actual solution to this terrible situation that one hundred percent people should be held accountable for. But to call them settlers as a justification for their deaths is something that I will never do, right, and I don't

think it helps the struggle, right. I think it's important to say and then simultaneously also say, did you guys know that Israel played a very major role in establishing the Commas, Like, don't be stupid, open a history book, see what happened. Right, Understand, don't just be quick to call and quick to say both sides. It's not a both side situation, even though the aggression was terrible, those

are those two things can be true. It's a devastating, tragic event, right, and I know many great people that were killed in it, But in the same breath, we have to remember what caused it.

Isamal Bengvil and Smotrich are two settlers. They literally are settlers, like in according to the National Law they're considered settlers, okay, illegal settlers. And there the second and third most powerful people in Israel. Okay, I don't think people understand or know, but those two guys. There's there's a famous rabbi okay, in Jerusalem. He's an extreme missed fundamentalist rabbi, Jewish fundamentalist rabbi. What he's been calling for for a long time, Ka

sadaka is Kahana was right. He was a very fascist rabbi that was basically calling for the extermination of all Arabs. And they're basically they're called kahanistem and that's it's basically what the left in Israel used to call this government. Man tash Khanistem means government of Kahanists, Okay, that is what that's who's running the country. And this rabbi has been calling for in a biblical sense. And we all know when people have an utmost you know, devotion to religion,

that guides them right, not our world. Our world does not guide them. The religious texts and the religious leaders are the ones who tell them what is right and what is wrong right religious in religious fundamentalism, and so what this rabbi has been calling for for years has been a war to end all wars. Okay, that is what he's been telling them. That is what they've been operating under. Okay, their allegiances are to him, not to the Israeli people, like literally to that ideology, and so

they're in the government right now. Over the last year, they've been essentially adding illegal settlements at a rapid rate, emboldening and empowering settlers to commit violence that we haven't seen in many, many years, levels of violence we haven't been seen in many many years, even before this latest aggression I'm talking about over the last twelve months. And the biggest most annoying thing that I hear from Westerners that think they understand, right, they're like, oh, yeah, we

really care about Palestinians. But Hamas has to go two things to that. One, the fact that there are Palestinians on the West Bank and the Palestinians in Gaza doesn't mean they're not the same people. They're Palestinians in forty eight as well. They feel feelings of solidarity because they're all oppressed in different ways. Right, It's solidarity under this got under this Grand Zionist oppression that they experienced and so I think that it's a fallacy that it was

an unprovoked attack. It's a fallacy, right, It's not the case the fact that Aleksa kept getting bombarded by settlers on purpose, on purpose, I don't put it back like they did this to get a provocation. They've been provoking to get the retaliation for Hamas. They've been doing this for years. This is nothing new, right. Every time Ramas shot rockets over the last five years is because Israel was attacking ELECXA right right after Ramadan if you remember,

or doing Ramadan. Sorry, And so every time a barage of rockets came in right after that barrage rockets because Hamas wanted to show that someone is sticking up for them. But I'm just saying you have to understand the context when you're in a blockade, when you're living in a concentration camp. Worse than a concentration camp, frankly. Right, every electricity is controlled, water is controlled, food is controlled. You're not able to leave, right, You're not able to freaking

leave when you want. You're not able to come when you want, not able to. A sixty kilometer strip of land is the most densely populated strip of land in the entire world, depression is the highest, the highest rates of depression. I think the highest rates of child suicide are in Gaza. Okay, when you're living under those conditions, I have no idea how you don't. I have no idea what that would feel like. So how can I

judge anyone any response to that? Right in the same breath, I can also say it's a tragic thing that innocent people died, and they're innocent people, and I think it's important to hold that complexity. Also for the Palestinian cause. I think it's important to not lose sight of our humanity in criticizing the grave injustices that Israel has committed and putting the blame squarely on Israel's shoulders. That Hamas exists.

other choice. And I mean for Palestinians, I think, like, what's the biggest context that's missing is like they've tried everything. It's not their first choice to kill people that didn't deserve it. It's I think I think that's what's been really annoying with the the people that have chosen to spoke to speak out that have never spoken out before.

They are so narrow in their view of them that it's so damaging because they have so many follow werds, or they're talking about the wrong things, and all of those things like kind of perpetuate a really dangerous environment where like a six year old kid can get stabbed to death. Or I don't know. I agree with everything you said, and I really appreciate you saying all those things before I forget. We're going to take our first break,

so don't go anywhere and we're back. Something you mentioned early on that I have been thinking about and getting getting really angry about is why people are surprised or like unexpecting you to speak out about Palestinians if you are not a Palestinian. I am not a Palestinian. I'm Syrian, and I am extremely vocal about the Palestinian cause and the Palestine. I've always been one hundred percent free Palestine till I die. And it's almost like surprising to people,

like why are you so worked up? Like why aren't you so worked up like that? That's what really gets me is your humanity and care. It shouldn't be contingent on your identity if you actually give a shit. And I think that's what I really want to like relate to people, is this is not the Palestinian's struggle solely for themselves, Like this is a struggle for all. Like if this genocide obliterates the Palestinian people, that's on humanity shoulders.

That's not like that that is so indicative of how depraved humans have become. It's just so upsetting. It's just a complete obliteration. There has been videos of settlers saying they want to flatten the whole thing, make it a parking lot. I mean, I don't even have to tell you what like actual media and like politicians have been

saying because it's like atrocious. But I think that's what I want to relate to people, is like if you're not, if you don't care, examine that, because that is troubling to me, if you don't care about actual genocide. And maybe that word has been used too much to like make people give a shit, but it really makes me people's humanity when they are able to kind of just like shrug it off and continue about their day.

that I'm surprised by. I'm seeing many people that I wasn't surprised by posting the wrong thing, frankly, But I'm also seeing many people white people, you know, black people, right like, people of all kinds that are disconnected, you know, from an identity perspective to the Palestinian people doing so much showing up. I went to the I was. I saw images from the protest in uh the other day and there, and I'm not talking about the Jewish protest,

which was amazing, right. What JVP did with if not now in front of truck Schumer's house was incredibly right. That's that's solidarity. That's that's that's real, right, That's that's that's that's humanity, right, that's what humanity should be. That's real solidarity. I'm talking about the protests though, that that was Palestinian lad in the midtown, and I saw tons of Jews there, m hm. And I'm not talking about the stmar Anti Zionist, you know Hasidic Jews, those are great, right,

and they're they're helpful. I'm talking about like regular regular ass Jews, right, like me, Right, people like not even wearing yamakas, like people with you know, small yamlicas that aren't like you know, Hasidic or anything, holding up signs to help liberate the Palestinian people. In spite of the Hamas, in spite of everything that happened, they showed up. They were not scared. A Pastinian flag doesn't scare them, right,

I shouldn't it shouldn't. But again, I want to be I want to I want to maintain my my I

guess I want to maintain the view of objectivity. I think again, you know, Devil's advocate, I think when when, And again this is not not me blaming, right, it's more so offering kind of a perspective to question how to kind of move forward when people Israeli's Jews whoever, right, are indoctrinated to believe that Palestine means no place for me, okay, And then you couple that with the anger anguish that the oppressed people are feeling and saying, yeah, fu fuck that,

like we we don't want you here, right, like you look what you're doing to us. I think that they view the Palestinian flag as a replacement of, you know, the flag of Israel, which many people actually kind of not many people, some people view it that way. And I think that the way I see it and the way many people I know see it, it's a flag that represents liberation from oppression, liberation of the Palestinian people who are being actively oppressed by Zionism, right, an ideology, right,

you know, perpetuated and executed by people. But it's still an ideology.

you know, power against the people right now. It's just very, very scary and everyone should be up in arms, no matter where your feelings lie. But there is you know, there's a new president. You know, every four years of a president is termed. Right, you can't be you can't be a president for more than two terms. Right. These are real things, right, these are real protections you have

three different branches of government. Right, you have local level local government, you have so many different checks and balances that are you know, corrupted and corupted in certain ways, you know, through lobbyists and you know, corporate interests, et cetera. I'm aware, but at least you have that system. In Israel, that system doesn't exist, Okay, there's no constitution and a

prime minister can't be termed. And so now Bibing Ntano has been in power and figured out how to survive attempts on his throne many times over through building coalitions with the right wing extremists, which frankly are against his interests. Like he wanted to kind of perpetuate status quo and just kind of be in power. Like this is kind of made it difficult for him to just be the guy who kind of you know, makes it makes everything

okay for Israelis. Right now, Israelis are scared shitless and so. But but putting that aside and going back to your point, the knock about was never even discussed until recent history, Like it was not like no one even knew what that word means. Right, we celebrated it as Jomat's mote independence day. So the Israeli Independence Day is the Palestinian's knockbat which means the great tragedy for those who don't know, and what they call it the catastrophe. Yes and so.

But but what's interesting and very sad is that in recent years, because of the world actually and when Israelis tell you don't know what you're talking about, don't comment on things you don't talk about that you don't know about. You most likely if you've done any any literally any if you read one book on Palistine, if you read on Palestine by Noam chomskyin and Elain Pape, like, you

know more than Israelis know about their own situation. And I say that wholeheartedly because I know what they study, right, They omit the large swaths of information in order to form the psyche through the narrative that they perpetuate. And so. But because of recent external and global pressure, because of the fact that the world's the new generation of young people have educated themselves on Palestine, you know, catalyze a

lot of them, catalyzed by the social justice movement. Right, the Angela Davis is the Tromskis of the world who always since the sixties I've been talking about Black liberation is incomplete without the liberation of Palestinians unifying struggles. They know more about history of it Israel and Palestine then Israeli's new. Okay. I've always been super impressed, not like not to say that people are dumb. I actually think people are very smart, right if they're willing to look.

But every Palestinian friend of mine, every single one knows so much about Zionism and zion Is history, right, there's scholars of Zionist history, right, But Israeli there's no idea about Palestinians and Palestinian history.

ethnic cleansing and like forgetting to even exist. And I think that's very unsettling because you can't just forget. I mean, at the same time, they say, like history is written by the people that are in power, right, or the people that like win the war, quote unquote, and they're very capable of convincing a big amount of people that likew like that they were never here.

it's also important. I keep saying the Palestinian struggle is the people's movement all over the world, right, and we're seeing that It's not me, I'm nobody, but but we're seeing that people understand that. Right. Like I said, people are smart, Right, you don't have to go to you know, an Ivy League school to be intelligent.

and maintaining the system of oppression. Right, you can be as educated as you want in that form of education and not understand the world and understand the inequalities around you, right, But if you feel those inequalities, if you have that empathy, if you're able to expand your consciousness a little bit to also include those that you may not identify with or as or you know that that maybe are not tangible, their experience is not as tangible to you, then then

you're able to understand and situations pretty clearly and easily. And I think the world is showing up because they understand that. Right. Sure, the air world is showing up. And that's incredible, right because they understand. Right, this is like what I always say is Palestine is the last kind of like I said earlier, the last direct colonialist project that exists in the world direct right, in terms of direct and active about that colonials project that exists

in the world and the air world. You know, if you read Edwards Aid and Orientalism, you understand how the West basically created and othered kind of they are a world in order to create that separation and division in order to create you know, a world that serves self interest in visualism versus kind of communitarianism and of the

kind of East. And so when when you think about in that context, you start understanding that, you know, this is and this is a struggle against kind of Western imperialism, right, this is a struggle to free all oppress people, because

that's what that's what Zionism Israel currently stands for. And everyone who perpetuates it, and people that talk about intersectionality and anti racism and all of that, and they still say and they still don't understand that this is literally a real time manifestation of the ship that they've been reading in history books, right, and we're seeing it and it's jarring, and resistance is fucking jarring, right Like it

was darring to me. I could barely watch it. I had people crying, you know, and this is I didn't say this earlier, but I had you know, family members that didn't want to speak to me, and like, you know, people cursing at me, and like friends from you know, middle school sending me hate messages. My mom is receiving death threats, right, Like this is real shit, right, And so like this isn't like an abstract like and and so you know that's what that's what people don't necessarily

understand when they just approach it academically. And I commend them. And I think it's important to like understand the intellectual context of things, like I've done the work, I've read the books, but I think it's also important to kind of take a step back and contextualize things all around, right, and only through that contextualization can we rehumanize, you know, both the the oppressed and the oppressor are in order to actually have a path forward that's inclusive of all

that doesn't that doesn't pit people against each other. Right, Jews lived on that land for many years before Zionism, if your.

seeing in their world today. Right, compounded by the introduction of a European ideology into the region that served European interests, is what is what we're seeing to this very day, and the Palestinians bear the biggest brunt of it. I wouldn't say like I would say, like in recent years, there's tragedies all around due to Western imperialism and Western intervention. Right, I take that back, right, Like I don't want to compare tragedies, but the tragedy of the Palestinian people that

there's no one really advocating on their behalf. Yeah, I was going to add a wrinkle that probably ninety nine point nine percent of the population doesn't know, including Pustinians and Arabs, because it was actively erased. But up until psychs Peco, up until Western imperialism, Arab Jews were an integral part of Arabic culture. Okay, An my grandparents from Iraq, Right, Iraq wasn't the Iraqi Jews were not Zionis. There were hundreds of thousands of Jews in Iraq that lived there

since Babylonian times. Right, there are many you know, many empires that came through the air world, right, so this place replaced et cetera. But they were there for hundreds of years at the minimum. Some would say some of them were actually not there due to the Spanish Inquisition, right, but actually were there before and never left basically, And so you know they were musicians, you know, they played kusum, right like there were there were statesmen, there were they

were very integral part of the culture, right. And and there many Arab friends that do know this, and they they're like, yeah, like this is the biggest, the biggest, one of the biggest tragedies is kind of the betrayal of the Arab jew right, And they understand, right, like at this point in time, and this is not only iraqis was Egypt and you know Yemen and Morocco. There's a huge just community, right, like these these people live there.

The Nazism is not an Arabic concept. They're trying to paint Arabs as Nazis.

in those communities. And I think, I mean, this is obvious for people that are reading about all of this, but the media and Zionism in Israel, they're purposely conflating what's happening with religion to make it more complicated for people, to make it this like ancient battle of all time, when it's not about any kind of Muslim versus Jewish versus Arab versus whatever. It's it's really so simple, to

the point where it's kind of silly. And I think they make it so complicated for people to be scared to talk about it. They're they're not informed enough. They don't know about religion, they don't know about the history. You don't have to know about any of that to know that oppression is wrong and genocide is wrong.

became the idea, the idea exactly. The three militias that formed that formed the IDEF once Israel was given statehood were considered terrorist organizations. The ira Rist organization right Melson Mandela was on the US Terrorist watchless until two thousand and eight. These are real things. These are all facts.

But I'm saying even if you're thinking about it from the perspective of attacking civilians, Okay, wrong in my opinion, but when you don't have if you look at actually ere another another fact, right, look at what the Chbella is doing. Okay, they were considered terrorist organization. Their armed to the teeth. Israel scared shitless of the Isabella threat. I'm hearing it from people on the ground. Right, they're attacking military targets. They're showing the world that they can't

because they can. They used to not be able to, Now they can. So they are when a population is oppressed, suppressed to the level that the Gosins are, what military do they have? Do they have F sixteen fighter jets that they can go and bomb? I don't know the Kiriyah, did you guys know that the biggest military base in Israel is in the middle of the televis.

So I always tell them, guys, like, we have to be smart. We have to make sure that you know, again, I like, it's it's trauma that I can't you know, I feel in my bones. But but it's not it's not directly happening to me, and and and so I can't. I'm not. It's not from a place of judgment. It's from a pragmatic perspective. We have to understand that that's

the trap that they're setting for us. The Kamas enacted the Kamas did exactly with the right wing government wanted them to do in order to justify the plan that they had all along. I'm not going to go so far as to start perpetuating conspiracy theories because it's not my place. So I'm not going to say that they planned this and it was, you know, an inside job. I'm not going to say that. But what I will say is it served the interests of the right wing government.

And the one thing I wanted to say, because I keep going off on tangents and I apologize, But to your point about the Knakba, I said, in the last ten years, it's pretty crazy to see the narrative shift. Israel has so been so emboldened. They feel so invincible because of the international support that they have. Now they acknowledge a knakoba. Now they acknowledge the knob, but we

know how they acknowledge it. They say, yeah, the Knackba happened, Let's do a second one, yep, right, And so now they're now all of a sudden the knock by existed, right, and they're basically saying, hey, let's do a second one. All the like, all the right wing government of Mine officials are saying, second knof but let's do it now. Let's let's that's what they try to do. Yeah, they're trying to do in Gaza.

a biblical, fervent, ideological idea. They don't freaking know what they're doing. They don't want to go to they don't want to go to war with Iran. They're scared of the Like these are real things, these are real threats, Like Israel hasn't fought a real opponent since the seventies and the Young pol War. That's what I'm trying to say, Like this showed how vulnerable they are and they're scared. I'm telling you, like I know the sentiment on the ground,

like people are scared out of their minds. They don't think. They're not very confident in Israel's military, right, Like that's why they're bombing the shit, and like that's why they haven't invaded. They said they're going to invade, babes talking this big game. They haven't done yet because they're scared.

survival mode. Everyone's posting, everyone's like you have to eradicate come us. They're not even eradicating comas. What are they doing, They're just emboldening come ups Like this happens all the time. It's just happening on a much bigger scale right now. Every any Hamas leader that they basically looking for, like a big like a major Hamas leadership, you know, attack and once they're able to neutralize, you know, in their words,

numerous high ranking officials. I think they'll declare victory even though they're not going to be victorious. They're not going to bring back the fourteen hundred people.

I didn't I didn't know. I didn't know. In Israel, there are many people, not even ideologically that want to bring the hostages back and don't understand why Israel is doing what it's doing before and not even talking to them about the hostages.

failure on behalf of Israel. And that happened because over the last six to nine months since the right wing government took place, took power, they've been using the idea to support, empower, embolden and protect settlers in the West Bank. And that's why settler attacks have increased. That's why settlements have increased, that's why they're more settlers than ever before. And what they were doing on that very day people

don't already know. I hope they do. But if they don't already know, the IDF was in the West Bank on Sukquot, which is a Jewish holiday, and they were protecting settlers in building a sukkah, that structure that people sit in in the middle of Juara, a Palestinian village, and they were protecting them and chaper owning them so that they can break into Palestinian village to build a sukkah in order to antagonize Palestinians. That's say what you may about anything else. The fact that that is the

priority of the government. You know you're doing the oppression. You're already committing the oppression. You're already subjugating the Tastinian people. You know that Hamas is comas, you're going to remove security forces from the border to embolden and empower settlers instead. It doesn't make any sense.

I was just sent this tweet apparently yesterday, the twitter for Israeli Prime Minister at Israel PM said this is a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle. Are you fucking kidding me? That's like Nazi Hitler shit? Are you there are so many lives I've already been lost, and the ones that have not been lost are never going to recover. They've lost so much other than their life.

There are so many terarrifying and horrific videos that I've seen that no one should have to go through, And not only are they going through it, they're getting funded and encouraged by most of the world. I cannot accept that. I sorry, I don't want to cry, but I might.

to you, and it's like pleading for their lives. I just this can't be how we end up as a people. I'm it's extremely unlike no words to describe how devastating, and I think if you are listening and you are wondering what to do, there are places you can donate to. I can put some links in the description of sources that I trust of people to follow and all that stuff,

so you can look at the description for that. I think what's very important that people maybe aren't taking too seriously is how important social media and like spreading awareness has been, because the only reason the resistance has come this far is because of that, because more people are aware about what's going on. People aren't accepting that Israel is doing this. So I think we just can't stop.

Like as much as they want the world to forget that Palestinians were even there, we cannot forget Palestinians, and I'm not going to stop talking about it neither he is.

terrorist organizations. So even if that's what we believe, and let's just say that that's you know, we accept and agree that that's what Hamas is, I think it's important to understand that terrorist organizations have become political organizations time and time again. And I think that it's also important to understand historically the Hamas As as an entity again remind you was created and partially created and funded by the State of Israel, emboldened by the State of Israel.

Because I want to be very clear, up until the nineties, right al slow accords to the peace process. People say, oh, the Palestinians didn't want peace. To your point earlier, the Palestinians were willing to take almost anything. At that point, Arafat, who was considered a terrorist before he became a statesman, right, was on the table with Robbin had an agreement in place. Okay, and then people don't know. If you're not a scholar

and you don't know, you should know. Oh, Goldstein, an Israeli terrorist came in to a mosque I believe it was in Hebron, I don't remember exactly, and he killed more than thirty people during prayer, just indiscriminately shot innocent people in a mosque. So the biggest, one of the

biggest tragedies. Right, and then he was not only did they the response you know Overban's response to that was it was locking down Hebron, Palestinians in Hebron, so because he was fearful of what the Palestinians would do in retaliation. The immediate response by Rabine was locking down the people of Hebron. Okay, instead of going and doing something about the settlers that committed the crime or that emboldened the

person committing the crime. That's number one. Number two, that sparked the retaliation because when people don't have justice, they take justice in their own hands. So that sparked this series of attacks in Israel, right, devastating attacks in Israel. But it was that that did that, And it was his He could have he could have handled that differently, but he didn't, right and and and that was what sparked the response. Then in turn, okay again who putting

that aside? Right? And sorry, little tidbit. His grave Hu Cochtain's grave is go uarded by the IDF as some and many many many consider him a national hero.

they assassinated the Israeli Prime minister. And ever since then, right then you had Ariel's your own and whatever that to continue a peace process and you know, some capacity. But ever since then, for the last twenty three years, no one has been talking about a peace process. They blamed, they blamed the Palestinians for every act of resistance. They don't listen. They believe that they talk the way that politicians discussed the Palestinian kind of oppression is managing the occupation, Okay,

managing the oppipation. No one's talking about peace, not left left, pseudo left, whatever you want to call it, not liberal, zionis left or center or right. No one is talking about peace. No one is talking about any semblance of peace. I find it very particular, right, and this is why, this is why I'm saying we live in the twilight zone. That Donald Trump's four years in office, okay, he had Kushner that that say, what all the bad things right

about his about his behavior. He was and through normalization deals with their world, trying to get a deal for the Palestinian people, albeit the most absurd sort of deal if you ever read what the Abraham Cords actually entailed, right like weird like highways and weird, right like not a deal that anyone should have accepted. But putting that aside, he was talking about it. There was discussion, there was Palestinian like the word Palestinian was being said by the

Office of the President. In the last four years that Biden was in office. No one said anything, no one did anything to advanced piece. No one even brought a bogus deal like Darrek Kushner to the table. I don't make it make sense. I don't understand. They basically bought into the Zionist idea that we can just live, continue living while millions of people are being oppressed and occupied. This is the Democratic Party. And that's why we see the media now the way it is, because they're rolling

the media narrative too. Right, So open your eyes see it for what it is, right, don't get cloud don't let your judgment get clouded by this. Two side bs aspect hold space for the killing of innocent civilians, including the killing of Israeli innocent civilians, while simultaneously understanding that this is all because of the aggression of colonialism and specifically a perpetuation of the Zionist project as a colonialist,

nationalist ethno state. And that is what I ask of you guys to do, right, Yeah, thank.

there's a reason they cut electricity to Gaza. They don't want anything coming out of there. They want them to die in a blackout. And two they are literally arresting people for following Palestinian accounts. Now yeah, so I mean, if that's not sutalitarianism, like what the fuck is? I don't but anyway, so, uh, that's it for today. I can't I don't think I can do anymore. But again I'll put some sources in the description to donate to

to keep raising awareness. If you have people in your circles that are still hesitant about having a stance on this, like have conversations. It shouldn't be complicated. It really shouldn't be, because it's not. And that's all. That's all I have. Thanks everybody, thank you.

The hypeia was insane. Justin Bieber paid one point three million dollars for a board ape, which is one of ten thousand procedurally generated pictures of a monkey, and celebrities like Milakounis and Lindsay Lohan would fund and create their own NFT projects. In fact, multiple celebrities raised millions of

dollars for these kind of noxious little creations. Their logic entirely hinged upon the idea that something being a one of a kind somehow made it valuable, and that a digital token connected to a picture or a video was the same as say, a rare baseball card or a comic book, or the sense that owning part of a digital entity like a game was somehow valuable. I personally do not think owning a sword from World of Warcraft a unique one means anything. I do not think that's

meaningful in any way. But listen, got a bit of advice for anyone listening. When any one tells you to ignore your eyes in your ears, it's the Duller voice in your head that says, huh, that sounds really goddamn stupid. Or to of course, put a bunch of money into an unproven asset. You should always try and work out how they're going to get paid in the end. But nevertheless, it's important to know the fundamentals of this crap, this

noxious industry. Now, of course we're talking about cryptocurrency, so these are tokens on a decentralized blockchain. In this case, a non fungible token or not as an n FT is a unique digital identifier on a blockchain like Ethereum or Polygon, one that cannot be copied, substituted, or divided like a regular token. Ownership in this case, who owns the n FT is based on whoever owns the wallet.

That said, that the NFT in question is actually stored and meaning that if someone tricks you into sending your board ape to somebody else they technically own it. These NFTs of images, say the board Ape, Yacht Club, Pudgy penguins, what have you, are connected to images. So by which I mean you are quite literally buying a jpeg, you are buying a tokenized jpeg. These images are kept on something called the Interplanetary File System IPFS, and you have

an IPFS address that attached to each token. What's important to know about this is this is another decentralized project where there's no real proof that your IPFS dress isn't going to disappear in ten years. So you could end up buying one of these tokens and be left with bugger roll. Like I said, you're effectively buying a very expensive jpeg that may or may not be an image of something in ten, fifteen, twenty years, or even five years.

actually control it infrastructure, right, So it's different than holding, like, you know, a disc or, in the case of an NFT, like an actual physical picture of a monkey.

which are not useful at all. You are just buying a jpeg that leads to an image, and owning this jpeg, this NFT might get you inside a discord, perhaps a special discord, of like minded people who have spent a lot of money on something very silly.

storm of post lockdown financial hystery. You saw it with like AMC and game stop stocks, you saw it with crypto in general, and it was the sense that you were getting in early on something, and it kind of resembled in a funky way, like beanie babies baseball cards, but also with the kind of stench of the fine

art industry. But I also think that during the pandemic, and I'll get to a little more of this later, people really got this defined sense of how unfair everything is, how you can't just go to college anymore, you can't just work really hard and get a mortgage. You have to effectively find a way to cheat. And this seemed like a cheat they had got in on early. The problem is they didn't, and I'll kind of get into

that later. But another part of it, the part that really stank to me, was that they were selling this ugly, obviously rotten dream that you were owning part of a future media property, being at the yeah, like you were going to be part of Disney or Marvel the board apes.

When you bought a board ape, you allegedly got the rights to distribute it and build a show or merchandise, And in fact, Seth Green bought an ape that he tried to build a TV show around, Classic twenty twenty two idea building a TV show.

They thought that they were buying something that would give them access but also some degree of ownership over a future IP and frankly, I can understand how they were scammed because you had people like Alexis o'hanian, the founder of Reddit, who threw his VC firm seven seven six sunk fifty four million dollars into an NFT project called Doodles, claiming in January of this year, twenty twenty three, that Digles this year, this year. H In fact, now, to

be clear, the funding was last twenty twenty two. Okay, okay, but he claimed this year. And to be clear, Doodles is a collection of NFTs and an associated cut in that kind of looks like Adventure Time, but significantly worse.

a name, none of these have a character. I will get to the two characters and Doodles, because there are just two.

the intersection of two cultural myths, right. One of them is like the myth about how I mean, it's not entirely myth, largely accurate about what happened with Apple when it went public, right, and you have all of theseundreds of like nerds who had just been like working class kids who become worth hundreds of millions of dollars overnight, right, which has become part of kind of like our our cultural memory of like how tech is supposed to work

ever since. And then the other is like Star Wars, right, and the way in which George Lucas revolutionized capitalizing on every silly idea you've ever had, Like a lot of NFT. A lot of the NFT hype is based on the belief that like you could be you could you could buy into the next like Glurf, stream Bow or whatever fucking weirdo George Lucas character, and it could get a movie, you know, because yeah, it's all infinitely capitalizable.

physical goods, So T shirts. You know why you would buy a doodle T shirt? I'm not really sure, but you could sell it. Just the theoreticals here are amazing. But Doodles, really, at it's call, was sold on the idea that it allowed you to steer the company to vote on the future of Doodles, which is kind of similar to Board

Ape Yacht Club. You could get ape coin if you had NFTs of the apes or the mute apes, and you could then vote in these votes about the few true of the Board eight Yacht Club, but not Yuga Labs, who owns the board ep Yacht Club. So really you were just controlling a vague sense of nothing. In the case of Doodles, you could vote on what they may do in the future. It was never really obvious was

doodles a doo. Doodles is a dow okay, okay. And the funny thing to remember about almost all of these as well is not in the case of Doodles, but in the case of like the bord Epe Yacht Club and the ape chain, I hate this crape and Joyson Horowitz owns fourteen percent of all ape coin of their initial drop. They own multiple cryptoproducts, large chunks of these total tokens, and so they can control these votes if they need to. But what's also important to know is

none of this stuff involves the actual goddamn company. Nobody owns a thing. These decentralized autonomous organizations doos are always framed as this kind of democratic process, carefully leaving out the fact that demo crack system with transactable votes is by definition of goddamn kleptocracy. But on top of that, you don't own anything. You don't have anything with these companies. You don't get stock, you don't get anything. You just have one of ten thousand images that may in ten

years not actually go anywhere. It's farcical. The only thing dumber than that, however, is the fact that Doodles is no longer an NFT project and will no longer cater the speculators. According to a statement from marsh by the co founder, Jordan Poopy Castro, Poopy is oh wow.

that's just very special to me. So yeah, continue, I'll continue. So, just to be clear, less than the year before this, according to their investor, this company was positioned to continue to define the NFT industry and onboard millions to the blockchain and become one of the most inclusive, creative, joyful media brands in Web three and beyond. This is the same company that had now officially rug pulled their entire

customer base. And by the way, if you'd have invested at the time that the fifty four million dollar funding round, so towards the end of twenty twenty two, you would have lost money. You would not have gained money. There was no liquidity event that had given would give you anything. Also important to recognize with so other than Alexis o'hanian,

the other investor in Doodles was FTX Ventures. So in March of twenty twenty three, you kind of sat down with morning coffee and you read the announcement from Jordan Poopy Castro and found out that your FTX back to n FT project had lost about eighty five percent of its value and now the company was not backing you in any fucking way.

sounds dumb. And also when you read it at the time, it's you were meant to be buying into the next Disney, the next Marvel, Yes, what was sold?

like landscape will be. And you're like, oh, this is this is like my chance I can be one of ten thousand people to like contribute towards this next big, you know, cultural thing in ten twenty years. I mean, obviously that's like in retrospect, it's very clearly a scam for some people, like probably myself and many people listening. Initially this sounded like a scam, but it certainly was

alluring for a good deal number of people. I mean, I'm this is kind of reminding me that there was this very similar kind of DOW, big big failure around Dune. They were wanting to put out.

commit massive fraud, and they completely collapsed. Like this Dune like NFT DOW project was being was being boosted by a lot of like very mainstream publications. It was it was extremely hyped up, which can lead people to like assume this is like a legitimate, like entertainment project that you could like participate in by buying this small little piece. Last year, very very clearly kind of fell apart. Yes, was kind of pre predestined.

God bless him. Oh they're happy. But nevertheless, Alexis has managed to fairly easily escape all blame for the fact that he misled everyone with this and other things. But this in particular because the dream of doodles. God that sucks to say out loud, by the way, the dream of doodles was that you would buying one of these ten thousand things, and that you'd be part of a community and you'd be able to steer the doodle's movement.

with the project to push a vote through. They had to remove that in say why they had to remove it, and I guess because nobody gives a shit, because nobody cares, nobody gives a rap fuck about any of this, and then voted to appoint a founding Community Council to make decisions about where the doodle bank, oh my god, Jesus christis would be would be spent in the future. So the doodle bank was where some of the revenues went from the secondary sales of these NFTs, because the companies

always take a cart because let's seeking baby anyway. So if you were interested in the community aspect of Doodles, you're kind of shit out luck because they've now entirely deleted their Visions and Guidelines document, which is the part of the website that tells you how any of the community shit works, and they nothing is happening right now with them. There's nothing going on. This is the ninth most popular NFT project, and they have attempted to and

indeed succeeded in removing their association with NFTs. Now one would think, okay, maybe they have a discord. Of course they did find it eighty five thousand members, oh wow, except it felt more empty than my discord, which has six hundred people in it eight seven hundred and sixty

members as of when I opened it last. And the newest stands section did not have a post in it since August thirtieth, which was announcing that the Doodle's Crops collaboration had sold out, terrible news to the least buckable people alive, and their other official channels really hadn't been updated since mayor August. The General Hall channel, which is where everyone was talking, was mostly just bots and people's saying the words Dude's rule, that's dods rule. No real communication.

It felt like several chat bots kind of what you know, how you see Oblivion or Skyrim MPC's walk up to the other Yeah, kand greetings to you. Imagine that with NFT's eighty five thousand bloody people. I even tried to I'm not going to say antagonize them, but I did ask them, are you happy with your investment? No responses. I was like, how'd you feel about? No response? Someone responded with Dude's rule once and it's insane because you

won't believe this. The valuation of this company in their fifty four million dollar funding round was seven hundred million goddann dollars, and their chatroom as the charm and vibrance of a dying more. This is meant to be the next generation of Disney, and yet it has no fans.

even expressing an emotion. Just a bunch of freaks who got con saying GM every two minutes or hours. Actually, it was so strange because I've been in chatrooms since it was like eleven. I've seen varying levels of chat rooms in various games. Even the smallest community was kind of hopping at some point. This then had no life.

There's hap Is cap Mellow, and there was another one which I could not find a name for. There is maybe ten minutes of footage in the years that this thing is meant to exist. It's just so bizarre. It's so utterly craven and half fast. It's people attack Disney and Marvel through Disney obviously in Star Wars that oh they're just ah, they're pushing this crap out, They're just churning this shit out and saying people are buy anything. In comparison, Disney are steadfast or teurs. They are creative

agents like likened to Salvador Dally. They are the compared to the NFT people, they're gods. Because even Disney's least likable properties get more attention and have bigger fans than this. There are Disney adults who would like crying and falling on their knees when the lockdowns ended. Oh yeah, now

these people would care. Now these people of Jordan, Poopy Castro died tomorrow, nobody would shed a tear or even remember, apparently, And it's just I think the way to look at this, and especially Doodles, is that there is just within the NFT world and actually within the tech industry, writt large just this deep deep seated loathing for creativity, storytelling and the customer Pendleton Ward who made the original avengue time don't if you remember, which is very clearly where Doodles

is ripped off from Just compare them. They look very similar. He made it over a decade ago. It's a five minute long video. He made it on his own, without funding, without anything, and it's beautiful and it's weird and it's great, and you're like, Wow, I'm so glad this guy did this. Doodles, which has tens of millions of dollars sitting around, has put out seven goddamn minutes of teasers and advertisements for brand collaborations. That's it.

nihilistic parts of the tech industry. Yeah, because they did the bare minimum to convince people. They made up all of It's kind of like that episode of The Simpsons where they remake Flanders's house and it's just a facier and it effectively falls poster. Yeah, yes, exactly, and it's just enough to make people believe this could be worth enough, because it's never really obvious what actually makes something worth something.

In the collectible's market, there are established artists whom I personally own a bunch of original comic artwork, a lot of it by Arthur Adams, and that market is fairly small because there's only so much one man can do, and the value comes from what people are willing to pay. But in that case, it's beautiful pencils and inks and it's gorgeously you want on your wall. In this case, it's I'm buying something that sounds like it might be valuable.

There's not really a fundamental community that sounds fine, but when you push past even the first layer, it all falls apart. And that's because, in my opinion, the NFT hype was just a long come on customers in the media. It's a scam, a scam where companies built the appearance of value without but actually generating anything. There's nothing to old some vinyl figures. Who cares. Nobody's done. The boord Ape Yacht Club has the world's shittiest cartoon. They did a flash game called Dookie Dash.

single interesting idea in any of them. But they existed to con people into believing this completely thin view it and also the nihilistic part is it was talking about people collecting art and collecting creative things without actually ever seeing the value in the object. The objects creativity was only as valuable as it was sellable, but not even sellable to an enterprise. It was just like to another person who could continue the chain of shit.

experience in Chicago for children. Oh No, children create their own Doodles and you can pay twenty eight dollars per person to spend an hour in this Doodles themed art installation in Chicago. I'm looking at I'm looking at the availability there is.

early so you get to feel smart. Except the problem is that you're more than likely left with a worthless piece of shit. You're left with nothing. So fundamentally there will be and I don't believe more than a couple thousand people made any money on NFTs. Now, the majority of the people who bought NFTs are going to be left in the red, and every new entrant is just another sucker to hopefully dump an investment onto. Because there are no NFTs that have a fundamental value. There's not one.

It's not like No, it's that Disney, Marvel, none of these major things. Notice that none of them got involved. They didn't want to fucking touch as DC did a vague idea of buying comic covers, but even then it was half us because why why would you do it. I've been saying this since twenty twenty one, that these things had no value, that it was just an attempt to sell people this vague sense of participation in a

new economy. And in fact, there was a study that came out an analysis of seventy three two hundred and fifty seven NFT collections. Ninety five percent of NFTs on the market are now totally worthless. The value of these collections is zero ethereum. Almost every single person encouraged to invest them by The New York Times, by CNBC is a victim of a massive legal fraud peddled by Internet

charlatans like Alexishenian. I'm not saying he's one of them, but there are people within the NFT industry who also washtrade these things, which means that they effectively sell them to themselves. And there's actually increasingly impressive research that suggests that most NFT set were just washtrading, just people pumping and pumping and pumping. That's why justin Bieber's ape that he blet for one point three million dollars is worth

about sixty grand. Now he'll be fine, but other people won't. And that's what's really anger inducing. That's what fills my veins full of poison. And if these were never worth anything, and the majority of the industry is made up of fake goddamn transactions, and the people who will suffer on the majority, and the majority are not rich, the majority are not anything other than desperate people who were manipulated.

and that was like always the plan. Everyone who was involved in pushing this is was trying to, Like the whole game plan was create this critical mass of hype that broke people's ability to actually analyze what they were doing.

That just kind of made them panic and throw money in because they felt like otherwise they were going to miss out on their chance to retire, right That was the whole thing, and that's why, like the entire social media hype around this was all based on you're going to stay poor forever if you don't get in on this right now, Like it's so disgusting, and yeah, just evil, evil people.

and just enough to make that investment defensible. They and it honestly shared a lot of the language of the Joe Oldsteins and conspiracy theorists and other teller evangelists telling people to your point that oh, you're not gonna make it, Oh have fun staying poor. What a noxious fucking thing to say, What a disgusting thing to say to someone.

And what's funny is they use the other scam that some companies in the tech industry used FDx, for example, where they would raise rounds a venture capital which gave the appearance of a real enterprise where things were actually happening, and then they sold them this dream of oh, you could own a piece of this, despite the fact that not a single goddamn NFT actually granted stock options, voting rights, or anything else because if they did that, it would

immediately become a security, so they'd never do that. You don't have consequential votes. You don't have any industry over this industry. You just have a thing that can be It may not be fungible, but the operating environment for it is absolutely fucking fungible. If doodles was truly not fungible, they wouldn't be able to change the doodle's quorum.

They They said they were going to do a metaverse product. They sold NFTs of this metaverse thing that they've never shown, called other Side. I believe. Yeah, it crashed.

came out to another dimension. But then the monkey somehow put that key in a beer that the monkey drank, and then the monkey did another poo where it put it into the sewer pipes, thus making it necessary for you to pilot another monkey to go and get the key. Very fucking stupid, very bad, ugly, like the designs suck. That's the other thing. These aren't even good looking. And this is a company worth.

covered them. World of Woman. Do you remember that one World of Woman? The NFT That was my favorite one because there were so many guys in the crypto world who like Yeah, I bought a world of woman entity. I support woman. That's I love it. No, it's so good,

And it's because all of it's exploitative. NFTs are vehicles to exploit people, particularly Americans, who so desperate and fairly questioning their place in the world that is continually turned upon providing basic social services and the ability for its citizens to thrive. There are a few honest ways for the average person to accumulate wealth anymore. It's nearly impossible

to buy a house. Returns on the market suck. Market's already confusing, And yeah, all of that's quickly outpaced by the fact that you have student loans, health insurance, and inflation is making things more expensive than ever. And I would argue that that is really the root of what's so evil about crypto.

normal job and buy a house anymore. You can't get a mortgage. In many cases, you can't just go to college and probably pay those loans off in five years. God no, that shit's going to follow you decades and nobody's helping you. And then along comes these Along comes this very technological, cool sounding, non fungible token, this thing where oh, I could be part of this new art market.

I can be the smart one for once. I could be ahead of everyone, and the people on the other side of that transaction are telling you everything you want to hear. Then the next Disney, then the next Marvel. You're gonna be part of something. You're gonna make it. That's what you'll do if you buy into this. All of those crypto people are totally fine, all of them, the Winklevosses like Sohanian Mack Andresen Christi, they're all doing great.

They are multi millionaires several times over. The people on the other side are victims, victims of what I would argue any just society would decide was a financial crime. And I think that every single venture capitalist who put money into these products and who pumped them should be held accountable. They won't because that is the modern tech industry, because that is the modern government. There is no justice for the victims of NFTs. And it's really horrifying to watch.

sympathetic to former cult members. That it's actually like a crucial part of getting people to like get past this sort of thing.

out for most people. There really isn't. Most people get lucky, and that's how they live what used to be, what used to be just like the general purpose good life, two point four children, house, white picket fans just doesn't happen for anyone anymore. And you're left with this. In a society where that happens, where there's so there are so few opportunities to thrive for people, you get things like this, you get these massive cons and I think that it will be hard for this to take root again.

I don't think cryptos unscrewing people. I think that they will find a way to pump this in the future.