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Good morning, and welcome back to Counterpoints. I hope everybody had a good holiday break, and I hope everyone had a chance to read my book. You're gonna be a quiz on it at the end of this show.
Are you going to be ready for it?
Oh?
Absolutely excellent this She had already read this.
Out passive flowing colors.
But we've got a big show today because we have some of the largest and most significant i think, political and military developments in the war in Israel and now also Lebanon that we're going to get into at the
end of the show. We're going to have a tech guy, Paul Bigger, who went viral toward the end of December with a post where he called out a lot of people that he was directly doing business with, calling them apologists for genocide, telling them you can keep your money, and we're going to talk to him about what the last two or three weeks has been like since then, because I think a lot of people, whether it's this issue or others, have always kind of dreamed of the
idea of telling everyone in their professional lives to just go pound stand and I don't ever want to see you again. He actually did it. He did the Tom Cruise thing from that show Jerry McGuire, Yes, the Jerry McGuire thing.
Now I'm worried you're going to Jerry McGuire everybody here.
Or they did the Dave Chappelle thing at the from Half Baked Right, anyway, you're going to.
Do that too, probably one day day.
One day. But you're cool, sweet, Well, we also be This.
Is kind of in some ways related to what we're all talking about with Israel, obviously because it kicked it all off. But the president of Harvard resigned yesterday, was pretty clearly pushed into her resignation amid allegations of plagiarism. There was an I've seen story that basically didn't happen.
So we're going to break that John Doe's getting called out.
That sounds maybe like anti news, but we're going to break down exactly why this didn't turn out. The list that was supposed to be released yesterday. Everyone was anticipating it a list of John donate.
Why do they keep teasing us with this? They're never going to tell us anything.
It's been temporarily delayed. So we'll stay on the case and we'll kind of explain what happened too. And then Unusual Whales, The Great Unusual Whales Heroic Unusual Whales is out with a twenty twenty three report on congressional trading that Ryan, honestly I think should be one of the biggest stories in the country. It is so repulsive. It also goes back to Israel in a lot of ways too.
So members of Congress are still allowed to trade stocks, like despite them promising we're going to take care of that under the last Congress. That despite Kevin McCarthy saying it was gonna be the very first thing that he took care of when he took power. American people gave him that power. He's now trading stocks is a private citizens. So congratulations to everybody, and for the American people.
It should not go without note that Ryan is wearing his Christmas tie. That's right for everyone who follows along with the saga of Ryan's ties and Ryan's Christmas ties in particular.
It's a nice time you get used to this one. In twenty twenty four, you're going to be seeing a lot of it. It's in the rotation, that's right, it is indeed.
Well, let's start with the breaking news out of the Middle East. Ryan, I'm really curious for how you were reacting yesterday to the sites from Beirut Lebanon.
Yesterday we got news that the IDF accomplished its most significant assassination to date of a top Hamas political figure. But this one was in Beirut. Here's footage from the aftermath of that attack. So we're told it's a Rory, who is a deputy political leader in Hamas's political wing, was killed in that attack. He had been a target of Israel's for a very long time.
The US had had him on a hit list as well.
This is the highest ranking official that Israel has killed
since October seventh. According to the reports that we're getting, the fact that it did not happen in Gaza but instead in Beirut, is creating a concern about the escalated, the spiraling escalation of this conflict, but also from the other direction, raising questions among some people that if they have this intelligence capacity and if this is what they were doing, they would have maintained a lot of global support even though this is a political figure, he's connected
to the alk Isaan brigades, Rather than dropping two thousand pound bombs to go after low level Hamas figures and kill dozens to hundreds of civilians at the same time with a casually rate climbing over twenty two thousand, with a lot of people unable to find food all day long at this point, if they'd have taken a more targeted approach, I think they would have maintained more support around the world.
Yeah, that's an interesting point because there have been quotes about precision versus turning Gaza into a parking lot, and there's been completely i would say, contradictory points being made depending on who's talking from the Israeli government about whether the goal is to turn Gozit into a parking lot or whether the goal is precision. The precision versus parking.
Lot approach and do we have a two here?
Yeah, okay, so I think we used a two, but here's a three. This is to Ryan's point, Senior Hamas or Hamas hasn't formed mediators. So senior Hamas officials that are involved in mediations, they've said they're freezing all hostage negotiations until further notice. There are still dozens of hostages. We don't know how many exactly are alive. That's another
difficult thing of all of this. I think it's still north of a high hundred hostages now frozen in the light of this in the aftermath of this attack, and.
A lot of these hostages are actually active duty soldiers that are going to be much more difficult for Israel to exchange because exchanging civilians, exchanging a civilian hostage for kind of civilian hostages held in Israeli prisons under administrative detention or something like that is an easier negotiation. When it comes to trading kind of prisoners of war active duty soldiers who were captured in combat, then Hamas asked for much more significant concessions in order to trade those back.
Then there's the complication that because the IDF completely melted away on October seventh, for so many hours that allowed a bunch of just gangs and random fighters to make their way through the fence and into some of these Israeli areas. And so what people are saying is that Hamas doesn't even know where all of the hostages are. And that's a big problem for the negotiations. Well, because
Camas can trade the hostages that Hamas has. But you just had some thugs and gangs come in and grab people and so and so where are they and who negotiates for them? All of that in the context of this assassination just blowing up the talks.
Yeah, and we have actually some footage we can roll here of the fallout in the streets of beaut and in Georgian and other places. Right. Yeah, so you can see the protest on the screen here, and if you're listening to the show, you can see a big crowd walking down the street of Beirut protesting what had just unfolded. It's nighttime, so it's probably not too far removed from
the event itself taking place. Ran then this is all coming in the context and importantly in the context of of President Biden saying what we want is, you know, kind of a cessation. He might not use that word, of course, because it's so so charged, but a cessation of the invasion around the new Year. And that's exactly what appears to be on the table in Gaza that Israel is saying, we are kind of pausing, we're working on hostage negotiations.
And then this and the kind of the historical path that led us up to this neighborhood is also pretty interesting. So this was in the Dahia neighborhood. To run it back to how you even have a Hamas leader hanging out in that neighborhood at all.
You have to go back. You can go back as far as you want.
But if it's in the late nineteen seventies, you know, after kind of the PLO is kicked out of Jordan, they go into southern Lebanon, and then Israel pushes the PLO from there up into be Route and southern Lebanon. Then in nineteen eighty two they invade southern Lebanon with this kind of scorched earth approach to get the PLO Palestine liberation while seeing liberation organization out of Beirut. Because their idea is that we're not going after the Lebanese people.
We're not going after the Palestinian people. Were just going to root out the PLO and then everything will be okay, which sounds familiar. They finally agree, the PLO agrees, okay, after so much civilian death, after such a broad assault on the civilian infrastructure in Lebanon, which was deliberately done to kind of turn the civilian population in Lebanon against the PLO, the PLO agrees with international mediators that they
will leave. They will leave, They will get on boats, leave the port of Beirut, they go to Tunisia and other places. The agreement that they got from the US and from other international forces was that there would be an international force that would protect the civilian population, because they're saying, look, if this is if we're going to leave to protect the civilians, then somebody has to protect them. You can't just leave them at the mercy of the IDF.
Right after the last PLO official gets on a boat, the international forces leave Israel, then DF carries out some of the most brutal massacres in Israel's history in southern Lebanon that the names of them.
Ring out today.
And so they then occupy Lebanon up until two thousand. They leave after kind of a little guerrilla war in which Hesbola, you know, has become like a real force between eighty two and two thousand in reaction to this war. Then in two thousand and six they invade again and they they destroy the Dahia neighborhood so massively that it
creates this thing called the Dahia doctrine. Because there had been some hesbel of fighters that were using this neighborhood, the one where we just saw the images from to launch some rockets from there, and so they said they
came up with what's called the Dahead doctrine. If any civilian area is used by fighters to fight against the IDF, we're going to just completely annihilate in a disproportionate way, flattening, flatten it, They're going to turn it into a part lot and became known as the Dahia doctrine.
And that's in fact what they did.
The Lebanese will turned into a disaster for Israel also for Lebanon. But you've heard, you've had a lot of people saying that what they're doing now in Gaza is the Dahia Doctrine. They're just executing this doctrine. Just interesting coincidence that now Hamas is in Dahia and that they're bombing bombing the leader there.
Yeah, that is really interesting. And actually speaking of Gaza, we can put this next element up on the screen. Israel's current plan, According to this thread from NBC an NBC News reporter, Israel's current plan for Gaza after Hamas involves local Palestinian clans rather than the PA, administering areas and taking responsibility for civilian needs in Israeli official tells
NBC News. Israel's government also wants an inspection mechanism on the Gaza Egypt border to prevent weapons smuggling controlled by Israel on the Gazan side. Israel also wants a temporary security zone on Gaza's perimeter, but has not said publicly whether that would be on Israeli or Palestinian land. All this is expected to discussed in an Israeli cabinet meeting
at nine pm, that's yesterday, a local time. The Israeli official says, as Anthony Blincoln, our Secretary of State, prepares to visit the region, this is explosive ryan their plan for Gaza after hamas involves Palestinian clans rather than the PA. This is a total change in the order and not surprising in the wake of October seventh. But we haven't seen some of these ideas, these kind of vague notions
fleshed out into specific policy proposals so far. And what we get from this is Palestinian clans, we get temporary security zone from this, an inspection mechanism on the Gaza Egypt border, big news yesterday just.
On that front, right, And what they seem to be doing is just throwing things against the wall see what happens, to see what will stick. And for this plan this was planned, was immediately rejected by everybody who knows anything about anything, like, what are you talking about clans having clans? These are like, seriously, let's talk, It's not going to happen. Yeah, the only way that something like that works is if
it's a pretty minuscule refugee camp. And that actually fits in with comments that we saw from ben Gavi and Smotrich yesterday, which flowed into then this confrontation with public confrontation with the United States. So let's start with ben Gavier. If we can put up this, so he writes, the war presents an opportunity to concentrate on encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza. Ben ver telling reporters, and he says, we cannot withdraw from any territory we are
in in the Gaza strip. Not only do I not rule out Jewish settlement there, I believe it is also an important thing. So this is the thing of saying the quiet part out loud. So when he says the quiet part out loud, Matt Miller, my buddy over the State Department. He responds, quote, the United States reject the inflammatory and irresponsible statements from Israeli ministers Smotrich who said basically the same thing and Ben Govere there should there
should be no mass displacement of Palestinians from Gaza. To zero in on that that should word because you also had let me let me find this. You had the UN ambassador Lynda Thomas Greenfield. I have her quote here too.
We don't have the element. But so she responded later that same day, she said, quote in a statement, there should be no mass displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, and we reject the recent inflammatory statements from Israeli ministers Besilil Smotrich and It'samir Benkevie, so very similar wording from both Matt Miller at the State Department and Lynda Thomas Greenfield
over at the United Nations, our ambassador over there. Note the word should, like that these are diplomats who invest enormous amounts of weight in all all of the words that they choose, and for them to be deliberately choosing the words should rather than will, there will not be or there shall not be, I think indicates where the United States is at this point and how aggressive they're
willing to be, because what else have they said? There should not be two thousand pound bombs dropped in large civilian neighborhoods, and there was like, okay, maybe there shouldn't be, but guess what there are? So the US, by expressing its kind of opinion on the matter rather than issuing a directive of what can be done with its assistance, is a huge discrepancy.
Well, and I think it also speaks to what they see as as reasonably or let's not even say reasonable, what they see is plausible. Because let's put the next element up on the screen. This is how ben Gevier responded, this got hot, really hot, so you can see it on the screen. This is the translation from Hebrew. Really appreciate the United States of America, but with all due respect, we are not another star on the American flag. The
United States is our best friend. But first of all, we will do what is best for the state of Israel. The migration of hundreds of thousands of God from Gaza will allow the residents of the enclave to return home and live in security and protect the IDF soldiers. Ryan, first your reaction, and second my reaction is just I don't think that makes anybody safer. I don't think anybody is made safer by that point. Like, in addition to
just the phrasing, I don't think that's making anybody. What does it accomplish the post October seventh goal of protecting and securing Israel, I don't think so.
Yeah, I'm more interested in your take on this because me, I'm already baked in on this and I found it just early outrageous that, yeah, this top official from the government government that we fund is going to tell us, you know, publicly to our faith no, that we we are going to engage in an ethnic cleansing of this of this area, like it's an not our humiliation to us as well as being just evil.
But that that's where I am.
What I'm curious about is does he start losing people, you know, who have been more supportive or more sympathetic toward what they've been doing over the last two months. So that's why I'm curious what you think of it, but also how people are, how people who've been supportive of kind of the IDF's effort here are seeing this
because now it's getting so difficult. Like Ted, if Ted Cruz were here, you know, he'd be like, I condemned nothing, but it'd be very difficult for him to suggest that this is now a targeted operation against Amas and that if a mass would just surrender, this would be over. When you have Israeli government officials saying explicitly no, no, no, no, no. What we're trying to do is get everybody.
Out, everybody out of Gaza. Yeah no, And we can't rule out settlements in Gaza and actually insist on them, right, And so again I would probably differ from Ted Cruz and other probably mainstream Republicans on the point of whether
or not that's why. And I think though that what to your point, what they would say actually is they probably come down on the side of Bengavie because they feel that the Biden administration has been insufficiently supportive of Israel, that the Biden administration's public posture of support of Israel is undercut by all kinds of things, you know, by its support for the UN, by.
The refugee or could Biden do if Biden were basically Ben Gavier's deputy, Like what more could he even have done?
I mean, that's right, because everything that the Biden administration has done and like this is a great example of where mainstream Republicans would say Biden has been insufficiently supportive, because we know that Biden was negotiating behind the scenes for a draw down in the New Year, and that's something that people in Israel, sort of hard right people in Israel were uncomfortable with, and that a lot of people here disagreed with, saying that as soon as we get,
you know, to this period of the new year, this should become become a p is an operation, which is sort of a teal in and of itself, of course, yeah, become a position operation. So I think that's what they would say. It's hard for me to argue that position because I don't believe that position. I don't buy that position myself. But I think actually that's christ and I were talking about this yesterday. For us to be huge participants in a war, we're fundamentally we are on different pages.
The United States having the President say two state solution, two state solution, two state solution, and having net Yahu say absolutely for years, no, two state solution, it's not possible. One state solution, and you have billions of dollars of money, but then also munitions pouring into this war effort, tens of thousands of people's lives lost, and fundamentally you don't agree.
In the end, it's a very dangerous place to be because then there's disagreement on some of these smaller points that adds up to a horrifying picture of a quagmire, the recipe for a quagmire.
Or a recipe for what they call the peace between the Lion and the lamb, where instead of you do wind up with a one state solution, except it's because you've gotten rid of all the Palestinians.
A dangerous one state solution by the way, because you have pushed everybody into countries that are not that far away from you, still very close.
Well, they're trying to push them in the Europe and the United States as well.
Still, so Lebanon, like, these places are not that far and that's a right.
And we've seen how that worked out before.
Powder keg Yeah. Absolutely.
To read a little bit more from Matt Miller's statement, he wrote, we have been we have been clear, consistent and unequivocal that Gaza is Palestinian land and will remain Palestinian land. So there is a will so give give the United States credit there h and will remain Palestinian land with Hamas no longer in control of its future and with no terror groups able to threaten Israel.
But this is exactly what we were talking about the two states solution. You have completely different. It's not like Bengavir is just a member of parliament, the Kanessa, He's literally part of the government. That's to have two people on such dramatically different pages at the exact same time, when you have the US as such a huge participant financially and in terms of resources in this war, that's outrageous.
And words don't mean anything if the weapons continued to flow, like as long as we continue to enable the military assault, which then makes the settlements possible. And if after that we enable the importation of all of the steel and the copper and the construction equipment and other things that you need to build the four seasons Gaza that the IDF will want to construct. There doesn't matter what we say.
Matt Miller here says that is the future we seek in the interests of Israelis and Palestinians, the surrounding region and the world. If that's the future we seek, why are we funding the exact opposite future, right, Yeah, and raised the questions of whether or not that's what we actually see.
To the point where you're being clapped back at on Twitter by the government that you're backing. I mean, it's to your point, it's embarrassing and it should be frightening, even if you are on different sides of this argument. It should be frightening just because it shows the extent to which this war can kareem out of control very well. I mean, it's already obviously it's war, it's out of control, but could koreem into a broader regional conflict. And you know,
we started this block by talking about Lebanon. This is just an absolute powder keg. There's no clear sense of direction from our government, from anybody's government at this point.
The only people with a sense of clear directions seem to be Smotrich right and Benivie right, Like they have their eye on the prize.
And they are voices in their own.
And then yeah, like the who has done nothing to kind of make it make anybody believe that they're doing anything other supporting.
But what does he even think? Yeah about that exact question. We'll learn more about that in the days ahead. Ryan, we wanted to talk a little bit about the back and forth over we can put this next element up on the screen. A lot of people probably saw this. The New York Times dropped an article in the last several days that detailed their investigation. You can see the headline there, screams without words, how Hamas weaponized sexual violence
on October seventh. That was published just a few days ago, and it has some just incredibly disturbing allegations. Let me just read from it a little bit in case people haven't been following sort of the broader conversation about it. It is really official to say that everywhere Hamas terror struck the rave, the military bases along the Gaza border
and the Kimmits them, they brutalized women. A two month investigation by The Times uncovered painful new details establishing that the attacks against women were not isolate events, but part
of a broader pattern of gender based violence. On October seventh, relying on video footage, photographs, GPS data from mobile phones, and interviews with more than one hundred and fifty people, including witnesses, medical personnel, soldiers, and rape counselors, the Times identified at least seven locations Whereasraeli women and girls appeared
to have been sexually assaulted or mutilated. Four witnesses described in graphic detail, seeing women raped and killed at two different places, a long route two thirty two, the same highway where miss Abduscha's half naked body was found sprawled on the road at a third location. And I'm reading from the relevant excerpts of the article and pay attention
to the wording and the sourcing as well. The Times interviewed several soldiers and volunteer medics, who together described finding more than thirty bodies of women and girls in and around the rave site and intukubuts them in a similar states as miss Abdush's leg spread close torn off signs of abuse in their genital areas. Ryan, it didn't stop there, unfortunately, as unfortunate as it is to even delve into this, relative of the sister of one of the women that is discussed in the article.
Right, one of the main women that you mentioned in.
The article very much one of the main women in.
Described in a subsection if you've read the story as the woman in the black dress, right, The.
Woman in the black dress and her family talks in New York Times for the story and was not pleased with the outcome.
Right, They were shocked at what they read, and so her sister posts on Instagram. People have since verified that this is in fact her sister. Yeah, we can put up a nine. So basically, what she's saying here is that there wasn't time for her to be raped in that the New York Times never told them that they were going to discuss her death in terms of sexual assault. We can talk about how we can clarify and contextualize this in a moment, but just want to read a
little bit to people who are on the podcast. So she writes, the appearance is not easy, and she's talking about a video that the Times looked at. But it is clear that the dress will be up and not in a normal way. The head is half burned because they threw a grenade on the car so that it won't so that it won't look like I justify what they did there. The scum did much worse deeds. She's
talking about Hamas here. Yes they tried, Yes they cut off heads and parts of bodies, but in the case of my sister, they did not, and why not?
And so she says.
At six point fifty one, Gal sends us a message to the WhatsApp group. We are on the border. You don't understand what's going on, what explosions are there. We'll get out of here. At seven o'clock, my brother in law calls his brother and says that they were shot in the wave. She is grunking how in four minutes
they also raped and burned. So the sister's argument that she's making here on Instagram is that it's just simply was impossible because they were in their car and had the grenade thrown in it and that and so the Times. So The Times has not yet responded to this charge from the sister, but this was one of the central alliations at the Times build bilt, It's built its story around.
So we just wanted to raise this one here and we'll can we'll continue to follow this because the New York Times story has been you know, used, you know, quite heavily in the last four or five days, not just to kind of justify the ongoing assault on on Goss and civilians, but also then to kind of condemn anybody who has been critical of the assault and say, well, clearly you don't care about all of these atrocities that were committed, But to me, if you're going to write
a piece of this, of this heightened importance, you've got
to be a lot more careful than this. But it also feels like a moment where if you, as a reporter, as a media organization, feel like the wind is at your back, so to speak, that you're that the thrust of public opinion is all in one direction, then you get a sloppy you say, you can you report things that aren't backed up in the same way that you would if in other words, if if The New York Times did a piece where they were kind of challenging
the conventional narrative around what happened on October seventh, they would have those anecdotes so buttoned down that a hurricane
wouldn't be able to lift them off the ground. But if if you're writing a narrative that is in line with the conventional understanding and then just and just advancing in a little bit, you're much less careful about what you're because everybody's gonna, you know, gobble it up and share it no matter what, and because anybody who raises questions about it is then immediately asked whether or not they're a rape apologist.
It's I think it's always worth noting when a major news organization, or any news organization for that matter, faces a serious accusation of you misreporting something, especially in something as sensitive as you were talking to the family of somebody who was basically blown to bits in a ambush at a music festival, and you get that story egregiously wrong according to these allegations, I think that's always worth noting.
On the other hand, Ryan, I'm curious if I just like present you with a question that might be on some viewers' minds, which is why focus on you know, it's true, this is a bad and you kind of just answered this question because from my perspective, you know, there are taped interrogations with Hamas militants that you know, again, you have to put some stock in the IDF if
you take this as gospel. And I'm not saying that all of these taped interrogations that we've gotten have been perfectly you know that there hasn't been any editing or any coercion or anything like that that always happens. But also people who are caped of great evil and great violence are capable of great evil and great violence, and
that's what we saw carried out on October seventh. So I do take those, you know, admissions from Hamas militants themselves in their own words, which you can you can see and watch on the internet seriously. And so the focus that I've seen online about this time story from my perspective, has been disproportionate. But it's interesting to me because I think it speaks to one of the strange realities about the Israel Palastine conflict, which is that elite opinion.
It's one of the very few topics on which elite opinion is genuinely polarized. You know, it's it's not like, for example, let's see, it's not like what's a good example of like a lot of cultural things, gay marriage, for example, You're you're not going to get the same amount of debate on that among cultural elites are probably among the broader country. But even ten years ago then you would have among the general population on this, And we're going to talk about this in the next block.
Even at Harvard there are bitter disagreements between the Bill Ackmans and the Claudine Gays and other professors. And that's where I think people see that. In media, there are these competing narratives. Sometimes you get a narrative from the New York Times that is incredibly pro Israel. Sometimes you get a narrative from the Associated Press or Reuters and like, woo, you know, maybe that's a little too credulous of Hamas,
what Hamas is telling you, et cetera, et cetera. So that's where I actually find the response to the story interesting. But I'm just pitching that question because I'm guessing it's on people's minds.
And the first thing i'd say is there's a great book people should read by Christina Lamb called Our Bodies Their Battlefields, which is about the history of rape as a weapon of war. It's something that has been overlooked by the Larsi male kind of military historian, totally demographic, and so the possibility that there was zero sexual violence on October seventh is basically close to zero. Like it is it is, it is something that happens in war.
When The New York Times leads its most significant two month long investigation with a particular anecdote, because their article begins at first she was known simply as the woman in the black dress in a greeny video you can see her, and that is then challenged directly by her sister, not and challenge in a way that says, look, your timeline doesn't line up, like a grenade was thrown on
the car she was blown up. And The New York Times doesn't present in this article any other evidence other than kind of this, this this snippet of video, other than they say based largely on the video evidence, which was verified by The New York Times, so they saw the video. Israeli police officials said they believed that Miss Abdusch was raped, and she became a symbol of the horrors visited upon Israeli women and girls during the October
seventh attacks. Israeli officials say that everywhere Hamas terrorists struck, they brutalized women. And so if the symbol of the horrors visited upon Israeli women is this anecdote which is at the very top of the New York Times high profile story, and it is sourced to Israeli police officials anonymously, and her sister is publicly contradicting the possibility of it even happening, it requires further investigation.
It may be that the sister who is in shock.
Who is suffering through a tremendous grief, and may want something to be different than it is.
That may be, but this warrants.
This warrants more investgation rather than just sitting here and saying, well, Israeli police officials say this, so yeah, and the New York Times has a snippet of video. Yeah, but the video is not of a rape.
Yeah. I think that's a good point. I think that's a totally fair point, especially because the way both statements from competing sides, especially in the middle of the war, in the middle of any war, are treated by the press is an extremely important question because people's lives are on the line, like for example, with some hospital bombings retaliations.
The people who are making those decisions whether or not to retaliate are certainly following the press, and the press is certainly getting information from intelligence but also from its own reporting and all of that. So yes, I mean that actually, when when government is saying something, media is taking that a what is government either lying about or getting flat out wrong and just being oppy with facts for the sake of propaganda? And then be how is media treating those claims with skepticism?
Totally important because and trigger warning, explicit content warning, all those things. There's one reason there's been so much focus on this article is because of the height of and like the explosive nature of some of the allegations, some of them rising to the level of this is really hard to believe and isn't isn't backed up by forensic evidence, video,
other things, one witness that they have here. And I'll read people this and I think people will understand when I read this why some people are skeptical of some of this reporting and also why some people are like this justifies what's going on at this moment. The woman this is, The New York Times writes. The first victim she said she saw was a young woman with copper color hair, blood running down her back, pants pushed down to her knees. One man hold her by the hair
and made her bend over. Another penetrated her, Sapir said, and every time she flinched, he plunged a knife into her back.
She said.
She then watched another woman shredded into pieces while one terrorist raped her. She said, another pulled out a box cutter and sliced off her breast. One continues to rape her, and the other throws her breast to someone else and they play with it, throw it and it falls on the road. This anecdote made it into the New York Times, which The New York Times is saying is credible that people were that that hamas terrorists.
It's named eye witness.
It's a named eyewitness. Name is her last name is. Sapir said that they used a box cutter and were throwing a breast around back and forth like a like some type of a sporting event. And they do have another person who was hiding in the same spot. He said he and Sapier were part of a group of friends who had met up at the party. In an interview, he said he barely lifted his head to look at the road, but he also described seeing a woman raped
and killed. So there's a second witness. But he's they don't they don't quote him, like they don't, you know, he doesn't. He's saying he didn't he didn't look up, and then this, and then the story and then the story ends there basically at this moment. So it leaves people wondering, like what what happened here?
Is?
Did work? Like where there were there really people throwing body parts around the road and there's and nobody else saw this. There's no video of this, there's no dash cam video of this, there's no what where are these bodies?
Like?
Did they get picked up? Did he must take them back to gods? Like you if if if bodies were mutilated in this fashion, you would ex they we would have them, like you would think.
Right, Although I mean, I guess it depends because we know at the music festival and we can put the next element the last I'm up to this block up on the screen some of the security situation. We already know that in the response the idea may have hurt a whole lot of people. And so that is just to say bodies may be mutilated in the ways that are even after terrible mutilations happened to them from shelling and burning and whatnot, that it would be hard to
make that determination. And so yeah, the survivors of the October seventh concert are seeking fifty six million dollars in damages from Israeli security forces, and we'll have to follow that lawsuit closely because that's substantiated. There's no question that they have serious claims.
And their main claim comes from the fact that on Friday night they were already getting very credible reports that an assault was coming onto the Saturday. On late Friday night early Saturday morning on Friday, the IDF approved the concert Rave Event Musical Event festival to go for an extra day, and that said, it's okay if they had said, no, we're getting like the Because the IDEF is responsible for this event, which is happening just across the fence from Gaza.
The IDEF knew that there were all of these intelligence reports that something could be happening. If they had said no, the permanent you had, which was just for a couple of days, it ends now like we're not extending it for another day. Everybody go home. Three hundred plus people
would still be alive. It's not more than that, yes, right, it was how many were killed at the at the concert like it was at least I think it was at least three hundred, so yes, and plus the rest completely traumatized and running for their lives, and others others captured, taken hostage and may have been killed either in it a bombing, died of dysentery, or hopefully still alive and will be released at some point. So there's there's doing
in a landmark case. The IDF for what I think everyone across the spectrum agrees as a monumental failure.
In the aftermath of October seventh, the president of Harvard came under fire. The former president of Harvard, we should say, Claudine Gay. We can put the first element up on the screen. She published a letter yesterday resigning from her post atop Harvard. She was the first black female president
of Harvard. She in the aftermath of October seventh, was called before Congress essentially to respond to allegations that Harvard had not been as harsh on these speech questions that pertain to propoused Indian students versus pro Israel students and Republicans grilled Claudine Gay, they grilled the presidents of Penn and it was Yeah, the president of Penn resigned right away afterwards, and Claudine Gay in the meanwhile, So Claudine Gay meanwhile got hit with a ton of allegations of
plagiarism that originated actually from Counterpoints guest Chris Rufo and Aaron Sibarium, who's an excellent reporter over at the Washington Free Beacon.
Well, they were bouncing around the Internet, I'd read as part of kind of an anti DEI attack on Gay, like people were accusing her of being unqualified and boosted just because she was a black woman. So she just bouncing around like racist four Chan things before it kind of migrated into the discourse. Yeah, by Rufo really seems to be I don't know how much credit he gets, like if he was the one that first surfaced them, if he gave him the New York Post or what.
He did follow up on tips and the same with Sibarium that as soon as so. Basically, this is why it's related to October seventh, even though these are you know, play or allegations throughout the course of her career, is that they started getting tips. Rufo and Svarian started getting tips because people were so pissed off about her testimony in front of Congress in which she kind of copped to this legalese or resorted to this legalese to defend
Harvard's speech policies. And that's where this is, you know, like there's this so many different conversations happening in this one conversation alone that you have to sort of disentangle these things, which is I think the speech policy is absolutely correct, Like I think the speech policy that she was defending is absolutely correct, And on the other hand, think that she was using this awful like HR language
to mask hypocritical approaches to speech. So conservative students are obviously punished and their speech is restricted disproportionately in different cases, and so clouding gay gets brought before Congress and has no sense of moral clarity just like it is incapable of defending with any like real vigor and principle her position on free speech it was a circus.
To me, it was.
It was bad answer that given by both Penn and Harvard, because at least Dephonics said yes or no. Question. Can calling for the genocide of Jews get you, uh, get you caught up in the disciplinary process right at your college. I think she asked for it yes or no, Just say yes, because there are certainly are situations where it could and then you say yes. Of course, each individual case depends on the context, what words were used and
in what context. And you know, because there was a famous case of a professor at Penn who he said, all I want for Christmas is white genocide. Just a joke, people.
He was a Drexel.
Maybe Philadelphia, so he was a joke.
If but if you say that, just that there's a strict no context rule. He's done and everybody's telling an obvious joke is done if if context can't be allowed, but they just should just say yes. And then you force Stefanic then to kind of get into the weeds, which is what the mi T president did. She said, well, I haven't heard anybody saying that on campus. What are you talking about? And Stefana came back with, well, there have been people who chanted intifada, which is Arabic for
the word uprising. And at that point you're like, well, I'd have to see a lot of context in order to say that. You know, I understand why people receive that in a violent fashion because it's second to defada. It was quite violent or suicide bombings involved, but the word antifada just means uprising. There's a news outlet that covers Israel Palestine called Electronic Antifada. Like, just is reading
that calling for genis I know, of course not. And she's kept her job, and she has so far kept her job, but they're coming for her next anyway, go ahead, I.
Well, yeah, no, no, no that Let's put this up on the screen so we can see the examples of plagiarisim. The Freebeacon actually made this very handy illustrate where you can see highlighted text between Claudine Gay's work. She's a political scientist. I think she studied economics at Stanford and taught she's taught political science for a while, and you can you can just see the text being highlighted. That's
the same. We can put the next element up as well now too, and you could go to the Freebeacon website to read all of these examples, and you can see them in Rufo's work as well. It's also worth noting the Associated Press headline just this morning. I mean, this is one of the best that I've ever seen among associated bad Associated Press headlines. Harvard's president resignation highlights
new conservative weapon against colleges plagiarism. Again, like, this is what Jonathan Chait already yesterday and in New York Magazine was accusing Rufo of weaponizing quote like high standards of excellence something like that, one of those phrases like exceptional standards or standards of excellence, something to that degree, which
is just stop, pause and listen to yourself. That's a weird way to talk about what happened, because there are a lot of students at Harvard who looked at Claudine Gay and said, if I did what you did here, and a lot of it was not citing works that she later added citations to. Harvard tried to kind of wiggle out of this and not punish her at all.
But when you have students saying, listen, I would be kicked out of Harvard and my career would be severely affected if I had done all of these things and the president, I'm to hear the president is keeping her job with no punishments whatsoever. She just has to add citations.
I feel like that's where it became most untenable. On the other hand, the Harvard Corporation, which is this sort of secretive corporation that runs Harvard, has apparently been taking the backlash from people like Bill Ackman really seriously, and le Fong actually found an example. First, let's put B
four up on the screen. This is a least dephonic taking a little bit of a victory lap before it's a tweet from alistaphonics saying two down Harvard knows that this long overdue forced resignation of the anti Semitic plagists president, it's just the beginning of what will be the greatest scandal of any college or university in history. There there we have the inflation of the term anti semitic, quite
an inflation of anti semitic. And let's put up this Leefong tweet where he's responding to I believe it was this is the next element, Bill Ackman saying, you know, next up MI t to the point that Ryan made and Lee responded, Now they're going after you get another university president mit Sally Cornblath, who also declined to censor pro pouset Indian student speech. They're making it very clear
this is about enforcing pro Israel dogma, nothing else. So Ryan, that's to the point you made that it's not stopping with Clauding day. Right.
And obviously this wasn't about plagiarism, which is which then makes a lot of her defenders look bad because because everybody knows this is not about plagiarism, then when they find these very solid examples of what everbody understands to be plagiarism, her defenders have to defend the plagiarism because
they're defending the metaphyte rather than that one. Rather than to me, you just have to be like, look, it's true that you would not have been This plagiarism would not have been uncovered if not for the kind of witch hunt that came out of the of that hearing, Like the they came for you trying to get you fired, and they found this pretext to get you fired.
However, the pretext is legitimate.
You're bust sorry, right, exactly too bad, Like you shouldn't have plagiarized like and for there are a lot of academics who are in academics to get to other positions such as president of a university, and you have to in order to get there, you have to get your PhD. And you have to be published in respectable journals. Those are boxes that you have to check. And for those academics, they're kind of just checking those boxes while they're working
the politics and getting And that's fine. If if you want to be president of Harvard, that's that's a cool ambition. I'm not saying everybody has to be like just you know, in the stacks of books at the library, you could be.
But that's right, Harvard colors on your tie.
I suggested Rashid Khalidi, author of one hundred Years World Great Palestinian American Scholar, as the next president of Harvard. Like if because Harvard originally said, you know what, we probably would get rid of President Gay based on these initial plagiarism allegations, but it will look like we're caving to Bill Ackman and the rest of this mobs and RUFO. We don't want to do that, so they stuck by her for a while, but then the plagiers and allegations
are just too much. And so if they really want to get back at Rufo and Acman Rashid Khalidi for Harvard President doubled up further left.
Yeah. So this is when the New York Times they say initially fact. Initially, faculty reaction was mixed, with some saying the charges were serious and other calling the examples minor, including some of the people that were plagiarized from professor's Both camps questioned the seemingly ideological nature of the effort to publicize them but clearly ideologically.
Yeah.
But as more allegation surfaced, faculty support for doctor Gay began to erode. Particularly these questions arose about what procedures the corporation, which normally has no involvement in scholar matters, had used to investigate. So people were actually dissatisfied with the nature of the investigations, of the investigation, which they thought was sort of a charade and a rubber stamp.
And that is all sort of bubbling, and that's where Claudine Gay, who by the way, this is the shortest tenure for any president of Harvard since sixteen thirty six, which is when Harvard was founded. She was the first black president and the second woman ever to leave to lead Harvard University. So you can see where Harvard was reluctant to part ways with her, anticipating already charges of racism. Claudine Gay's resignation letter is in no way as an
apology for the plagiarism. She defends her work. She does not apologize for anything and says that she that this is some people have said she blames racism for what happened to her. I think she just kind of invokes it.
Obviously, the initial the initial allegations of plagiarism were surfaced by people who were upset that a black woman was made president of Harvard.
You're talking about what allegedly.
Was on fair four chan threats or whatever. Now they were surfaced because she's plagiarized, and clearly even able to.
Surface them because she was plagued.
But yes, she's not wrong that the initial people who found them and then leaked them and surfaced them to RUFO and the other other folks were animated by anger at the fact that they they thought this black woman didn't deserve to be president of Harvard like that she's she's not, She's not wrong about that.
I think there's always if you're a black woman in America and you're in a position of in a high profile position, you're there's always going to be a racialized element.
But you also have to because because you know that, you can't be that sloppy with your with your work. Clearly, what she was doing is she's all of these areas were like kind of it's the what what you would call the b matter of your your articles where you're just kind of summarizing, and it's so like, I'm glad I'm not an academic because some of it's so boring, Like you have to like summarize all of this prior research that's done before you get to your own original research.
So your little job is to try is to take other people's work, summarize it, cite it, and so that people like have the context for what your original contribution is coming afterwards. And so in those places where she's summarizing what other people's work is, she's just copying and pasting lines, dropping them in into her own work, changing them a little bit, usually citing where she got it from, but sometimes not citing.
Apparently forty plus times are in that right that ballpark.
Yeah, and so so then you're busted. You just have to you have to be more careful about how you do it. The whole thing is copying because you're just you're you're you're just reiterating what people have pre as they said. And so I understand why some academics are like, this is not serious, because this is just the grunt work. This is this is the busy work of academia rather than the original work that you know, we're supposed to
be focused on. But that's that's that's Look, they're the ones that set this stupid framework up.
They live and buy it and die by it.
It reminds me of, in a weird way, a lot of what happens on the on the right with Donald Trump, which is that you are completely correct that the people coming after Donald Trump for X, Y, and Z have ulterior motives.
Yes, they're not really just the broken clock however, information right. Yeah, So then the payoffs to porn stars absolutely.
Yes, and then still the broken clock is right twice a day. And sometimes it's like he clearly is seriously being accused of doing something that is clearly wrong.
Al Capone did cheat on his taxes, Alon and that's that is the moral of the story. Although we have no choice because you can't, like honestly criminal enterprise with the irs. So that was a little on He was in a catch twenty Yeah.
A highly anticipated set of names in one of Virginia Giffray's cases. Actually this is a twenty fifteen case against Gillian Maxwell. Virginia Jiffray is one of the most prominent, if not the most prominent Epstein accusers and accusers against Maxwell as well. There was a list of names that was set to be made public, as many people actually
know just yesterday. What happened instead is that as everybody was anticipating the release of these names that, according to leaks to ABC News and other outlets, were going to include dozens of mentions of Bill Clinton and potentially Donald Trump as well, that was postponed until January twenty second because of a filing from one of the one of the Jane was mentioned in the case, who would have been or successfully said she would be in danger if
her name was released. Now the judge was going to shield victims' names, but the list is going to be kind of a mix of the accused and accusers, So it was you know, there was a lot sort of legally on the line, and whether we actually ever get the list of names on January twenty second is an open question. Obviously, much of this information that we were set to get was probably already out in the public, and in fact, reporting suggests that a lot of this
was already going to be known. Nevertheless, everyone myself included probably you as well, Ryan, were kind of on tens or hooks waiting for this information to be released, because when it comes to the case of Jeffrey Epstein and Galene Maxwell and all of their various connections to intelligence, which really after of course, the many many victims who suffered over the years is first and foremost in this story, especially from a political lens, this was a very useful
bit of information, even if if much of it is already known to that point. One of those people who was on tenterhooks was Aaron Rodgers, who went after Jimmy Kimmel so some Disney and Disney violence because Rogers was on Pat McAfee's ESPN show and called out Jimmy Kimmel. Jimmy Kimmel responded, I think we have the video that we can roll of Rogers on the McAfee show. Watch. This had something to do with the Epstein list that came out.
It feels like supposed to be coming. That's supposed to be coming out wine. I've been waiting my wine cellar first time.
There's a lot of people, including Jimmy Kimmel, are really hoping that doesn't.
All right.
Obviously, a clip from this particular program was run on Jimmy Kimmel's show whenever Aaron brought up the list and then Jimmy marked him for it, and Aaron has not forgot about that. But here we are sit right in front of that nice bottle of scotch. What do you say, I'm waiting to celebrate something.
Yeah, I'll tell you what.
If that list comes out, I definitely will be popping popping some sort of bottle.
So that was from the middle of the day yesterday as everyone was waiting for the list to be released. It could have happened basically at any point yesterday and Rogers goes on ESPN and calls out Jimmy Kimmel also and say.
He was Jimmy Kimmel was on it or yeah.
So here's Jimmy Kimmel's response, invoking that great key and Peel sketch. Dear a asshole. For the record, I've not met flown with visitor, had any contact whatsoever with Epstein, Nor will you find my name on any quote list other than the clearly phony nonsense that soft brain wackos like yourself can't seem to distinguish from reality. Your reckless words put my family in danger. Keep it up and
we will debate the facts further in court. I sort of think that Jimmy Kimmel just streisand affected the whole situation, like a throwaway comment from Aaron Rodgers on a televis podcast. Maybe could have let that one go unless it, like for some reason, started picking up a bunch of steam, and maybe it had. I don't know, but I probably would have let that one go. I don't know.
It's it's hard to say because once in this world of you never know information being completely untethered from reality. You know, if if your name starts to circulate kind of in orbit with Epstein, there's just no way to pull it out.
But your question is an issue.
When did Kimmel accidentally make him propel it into orbit rather than just ignoring it. He probably saw a bunch of stuff coming out of that Rogers podcast, which which then pushed him to make a public statement about it.
He's right that it definitely puts his family in danger. There's no question about that.
Yeah, and there's he would know if he's gonna be on the list.
He says he's not.
He's not like that's that's pretty pretty clear. So the list would be supposed to have one hundred and eighty seven names on it. That includes Epstein's employees, his co conspirators, some perpetrators, but also victims. And it was one of the victims who requested that the names be withheld for now. I'll be shocked if they ever actually release any of these names again. First person is allowed to petition to
keep their name hidden. So I mean, I would love to have my faith restored in this process, but I don't understand how we're ever going to learn anything out of this.
So yeah, for example, this is the ABC News reporting. They say the document stem from a twenty fifteen civil lawsuit centered on allegations that Epstein's one time paramore, Geeland Maxwell, facilitated the sexual abuse of Virginia Giffrey, an alleged trafficking victim. Jeffrey also accused Epstein and Maxwell of directing her to have sex with Prince Andrew and several other prominent men.
Prince Andrew denied the allegations. Most of the prominent names that appear in the documents are already associated in some way with Epstein four allegations of wrongdoing for having worked with him, flown on his planes, et cetera, et cetera. In some instances, the only appearances of the names are in potential witness list or in proposed terms for searches
of electronic records. So ABC News at one point says something like, you know, Bill Clinton is expected to appear in the documents hundreds of these hundreds of sealed court filings from the twenty fifteen civil suit. But Bill Clinton is not, I think is The ABC News turn of phrase was like, he's not been accused of any wrongdoing. It's like, well, Virginia Jeffrey accuses Bill Clinton of being on the island of being a little Saint James. That's wrongdoing.
That is wrongdoing in and of itself period.
Wrong.
Yeah, that's doing wrong. Also, there's a picture of him getting the massage from the underage you remember that from the under the seemingly or the very young looking woman rubbers yeah, the shoulder rub yeah, which is just man. And in other news, Virginia Giffray has also Accusedwitz.
Well, she's backed off that she well, she.
Got, she got, she got slapped with a defamation suit from Dershowitz.
Right, and so now she says that she believes that that was a case of mistaken identity and all suits between Dershowitz and Jiffrey have been have been dropped as a result of that, which has freed up Dershwitz for his next effort.
Uh.
There is reporting that.
Israel wants to hire Alan Dershowitz to represent it at the basically at the International Criminal Court where it's being accused of carrying out genocide by South Africa, also now joined by Malaysia. This is a this is an ongoing case. I think it would be the first one since uh Bosnia, although you know that that happens in real time or Rwanda one you know was so fast that the prosecutions
didn't come until after genocide was over. In Bosnia, there were prosecutions brought during the conflict, which which did then kind of trigger intervention. So we'll see, we'll see where that goes. Dershwitz was asked for comment and said that he's not commenting, like he did not did not deny or confirm that he would be representing Israel at the criminal court.
Right. And you know, again to Ryan's point, will these names ever be released? I don't know.
I wouldn't put money on it, but you know.
One of the big this is just.
Like I'd love to be wrong.
The same and we've got a couple of weeks to find out, but then there might be another delay. When you're dealing with hundreds of people, you're dealing with hundreds or hundreds of documents, and at least dozens of people you're dealing that means with dozens of legal teams in all likelihoods. So there's kind of a never ending road ahead of us. And again we're talking about a civil case from twenty fifteen that has already seen a million
twists and turns. I was just on the court document list and it's already like eight pages long if you go to the reports of all of the filings in the case. So There's a lot more to come on this, but you know, I always think with Epstein, the main thing to remember is that there is reporting. There is people who have said on the record that they believe he's tied to Masad. They believe that he has tied to either It's really intelligence or American intelligence in different ways.
And you know, again victims first and foremost here, but from a political lens, that is is probably the most important thing to keep in mind, and we already have plenty of evidence to suggest that's exactly what was going on.
Speaking of a sordid list of names, he hey, unusual Whales is out with its annual report on Congressional insider trading.
If we can put up this this element unusually.
His first report was back in twenty twenty, and it helped, it helped, it helped reinvigorate the debate over whether or not members of Congress should be able to trade, which includes you know, roughly one hundred percent of the public saying that they should not be able to trade.
Yeah, including many members of Congress who will say.
Members of Congress coupled with the secret for us inside Congress to continue to allow the trading to continue. Nancy Pelosi said that she would that she would ban trading. Is what happened back in the twenty twenty two congressional cycle was, if you remember, Alexandra Cozi Cortes put forward what's known as a discharge petition, which is, you have a bill that leadership is not allowing to get to
the floor. You cred discharge petition that if it gets two hundred and eighteen signatures, it is forced onto the floor. So she introduced a discharge petition. It started gaining momentum, and Pelosi jumped out and said, I promised that we're going to do this by the end of the year. Pelosi's team then kind of interfered with the negotiations, blew that up. One thing leads to another, when't you know, the congressional term expires without the ban ever getting enacted.
Kevin McCarthy, while he was in the minority, promised that his number one goal, first thing he would do when he took over the House of Representatives was that he was going to use the Republican majority to ban congressional
insider trading. Ken McCarthy, no longer with us as Speaker of the House, did not ban congressional trading, which leads us to I guess the third fourth Unusual Wales report on insider trading, it actually, you amusingly has Republicans slightly underperforming the SNP over the year SMP had a good year good Old Biden, with Democrats overperforming the s and P rose at twenty five percent Democrats.
So it's very hard to guess.
The returns that members of Congress are generating. So he pegs Democrats at thirty one percent Republicans at eighteen percent. Because you don't know exactly when they bought the stop, so therefore you you don't know if they've sold it when necessarily if they sold it by at this point he annualizes, He annualizes return So there's a lot of estimating going on to come up with these numbers. But what you can certainly find is suspiciously well time trades from a number of members of Congress.
My favorite is when you match them to their committees, as Unusual Wales does here, which is the most outrageous part of all of us. And why again, I think this report from American hero Unusual Whales should be a huge national story because you just put the element up
on the screen about um speeding Republicans. Republicans did pretty well on the Senate side, but this is about how they're trading when it comes to war Numerous members in Congress, unusual whales rights traded warstocks before the Israel Gaza pastin conflict. We present the above table that's the one on the screen without comment noting that spias up only ten percent since the conflict. Well, members who traded these warstocks have often outperformed. They said they saw something worse at the
start of the Ukraine conflict. You should read that report too, because it's equally a stomach training. But based on the portfolios of members who would benefit from war stocks is what you're looking at here on the screen. I added our tweet for reference as our highlighting of the war conflict was part of Kevin Hearn losing his run for US Congress speaker, and Tommy Taberville is a good example of this.
I've definitely addicted to day trading.
He's addicted to day trading and seriously addicted to day trading. So he was he bought puts against Elon Musk's Tesla in twenty twenty three. He was doing a lot of stuff with Tesla. Actually, then he disclosed two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in futures trading of wheat, corn, soy, and cattle in August of twenty twenty three. He sits on the Senate Committee for Agriculture and Nutrition and Forestry. There's also a farm bill that was being discussed and
the can was kind of kicked. So another thing to keep in mind. He purchased forty five thousand dollars in Huma, so that's a penny stock in July, and he repeated that purchase right when the Ukraine War stard did and that ended up being used in the Ukraine War for tissue implants. And he's on armed Services. So another thing just to keep in mind is that, yes, these are annualized, and they're they're not perfect estimates, there's no question about it.
But at the same time, just in and of the self, in and of itself, the fact that they're trading, yeah, is it's outrageous and in.
The past unusual.
Wells and other reporters have found connections between whether or not a company lobbied a member of Congress and how well they that member of Congress then trade the stock. Because what what often happens is that, let's say Huma or whatever you've got, You've got a defense company that comes in and talks to a Member of Congress and says, here's you know, we would we you know, we need help with the Pentagon, you know, help us get through
this process. Here's this thing that we make this really good. And in the meeting they will tell the Member of Congress, oh, by the way, in March, like we're going to get through FDA Phase three, or we have a new kind of microprocessor that's coming online. It's going to like be amazing.
And so the member of Congress then gets that information from that meeting might help them at the Pentagon, and then also buys the stock, and then because they have that access to that early information, they make tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so it's a way for a company to put cash into a brown paper bag and leave it on the desk. Without putting cash in a brown paper bag and leaving it on the desk, Yeah, no money has changed hand. It's just a little hey, yeah,
we got an we got a contract coming through. It's gonna be worth you know, one point five billion dollars in two weeks. When that's announced, you don't even have to say, when that's announced, our stock is going to pop. The member of comments like which day two weeks you're gonna announce that?
Good to know.
That's That's exactly why it has to all be blind or banned completely. I mean, there's just no other way to do it. Marjor Tailler Green beat Rocanna last year according to these estimates. And we've talked to We've pressed Roe on this issue.
His his wife is wealthy and her advisor makes trades.
Kills. Roe.
Sure, but it's it is difficult because if if it's your spouse, who's who's doing it? Because it makes you, it makes it look like you're the one, yeah doing it. But that's and Roe has been one of the most outspoken in favor of a band, a band that would include spouses.
Yes, absolutely so, because your spouse is at all those dinners with you too. They're sitting at the tables with the lobbyists, traveling to the drunkets and all of that stuff. So there's just no question and overhearing phone calls and all of those so there's just there's just no question that it's and to your point about Row even.
Yeah, And the bigger point is it creates the appearance of corruption or conflicts of interest to people in the public, even even if there isn't any like, even if there's no connection whatsoever, people just like.
Come on right well and unusual. Wales reminds us of the stand Crenshaw quote where he says, some of the extentive this is the only way for Yeah, he says, you have no way to better yourself as a congressman other than trading stocks, which is something that's a kind of popular refrain on Capitol Hill. Is that compared to what they could be making in the lobbying sector, members of Congress are just doing public service, making that one
hundred and eighty k or whatever it is now. I think it's still around one hundred and eighty k. And that's not enough money to have two houses, because you have to have one in your district, and you have to sleep somewhere in Washington, d C. And blah blah blah blah blah. So of course we have to engage in corrupt conduct to do that. What else do you expect us to do but be corrupt?
Oh An update by the way to our last block and a clarification. It's the International Court of Justice where South Africa has brought the charges against Israel, not not the International Criminal Court.
The one that dershwitoz is right, the one that maybe or maybe not defending it right.
And Turkey has now joined and is backing the South African So you now have a NATO member taking Israel to the International Court of Justice.
Yeah, for genocide.
Yeah. Well the other thing I think, just to close a loop on the unusual whales segment, congresspeed the market overall, and of one hundred trading members, thirty three percent beat the market with their portfolios one unusual thing unusual whales,
unusual thing that unusual Wales discovers. They write. A general rule I found is that if Congress members are up for re election in twenty twenty four, then they've severely decreased and or stopped trading their activity in the last year and points to w Washman, Schultz, Nancy Pelosi and all of her fun NVIDIA activity. So the number of trading is down, the number of members disclosing trades is down, but the values of those transactions are comparable the years
pass says unusual whales. So they've been selling more stocks than buying. But they've also been selling more government securities than in previous years, and they were buying more corporate securities in the last two years as well. So important patterns to look out for in the years ahead. But hopefully we can just all agree to ban this shit in the years ahead, so we don't even have to see this put unusual wheels out of business guys.
Maybe nice, Yeah, that'll be nice.
All right, Ryan. Paul Bigger is our guest up next. You explained a little bit earlier in the show about why we're talking to Paul because of this viral blog that he wrote, some of which was directed at his own people he's in business with. So he's going to join us on the show next.
Yeah, stick around for that.
We're now joined by Paul Bigger, who's the founder of Circle CI as well as Dark Lang. Paul's also the author of a viral blog post put up on December fourteenth called I Can't Sleep. Paul, thanks so much for joining us here on Counterpoints.
And thank you so much for having me and.
So I wanted to read people a little bit of your posts. They have some context for this if we can put up this first element you write. At one point in this really harrowing essay, you write, I don't know what to do, but I know these are not my people who can work with people whitewashing genocide. Are we supposed to pretend it's business as usual as we send our friends intros frolic at conferences, discuss monetization strategy to Ed sim Erica Brescia, Michael Deering, and especially Matt Aco.
We're done.
I'll never pitch you again, never ask for help, never send intros or recommend you. I'm done with Bold Start and DCVC and Harrison Metal and Redpoint. I'm also done with Bessemer and Sequoia and First Round. I'm ashamed that these are some of my biggest supporters over the years, that people who invested in me twice, the people who helped, who advised I cannot work with the people whitewashing killing that people know it's happening and who cover for it.
And so, Paul, can you give us a little bit of kind of context about you know, first of all, how you came to this decision to kind of write this post, and what what is what is dark line? What is a circle CI can contextualized situate yourself in the in the tech world for our audience.
Sure, so.
The circle CI is is what they call in tech a unicorn, right, it's it's a it's a company that's worth a billion dollars.
And there's there's a lot of these.
Now there's there's about a thousand of them, and we were circle CI was sort of early in the in the most recent tech boom, the one that went from about twenty ten twenty twenty one, and was one of the one of the large companies in a particular space called continuous integration, which is sort of developer workflow, and so that is you know what, once you found one of these, you're you have a certain cache in the industry, and you find it easier to raise the next round.
And next fundraising round.
You know, you know a lot of investors, You've built up your network, you're sort of you're sort of in a little bit and so that that's sort of like my position in the industry. It's not you know, I'm not like Brian Chesky or Mark Zuckerberg or anything like that. I'm like two tiers down, but I'm also not the bottom tier or not not the people who are just
sort of joining the industry. And so the the context for writing the blog post was simply like, how can we do business as usual during this thing that's going on? During during the war on the people of Gaza, you know, they're they're At the time, the you know, South Africa had not invoked the Genocide Convention, but I think it was clear to anyone who was paying attention that that
there was a genocide going on. And I kept seeing pro Israel posts, and I kept seeing people who were saying basically Israel had the right to do anything it liked, or in a couple of cases, people focusing on what I considered to be what I still consider to be pro Israeli propaganda. So for example, the focus on Harvard, on Claudine Gay, on the anti Semitism at universities, those are all look away from the genocide that's happening in Gaza.
And the reason I wrote the post is just literally I couldn't sleep, Like I was seeing these images every day as many of us are, and just being like, how can we do work when this thing is happening?
Yeah, and there's something really interesting here you write, I wasn't ready to see that my friends are Brown trips, which you sort of just mentioned, that they actively true on the genocide, the anger, the desire, the need even for retribution against innocent civilians. I wasn't ready for my friends being campguards, party officials, propagandists. And one thing from the right that's interesting about that is I've basically seen people on the right similarly write that about people that
they would consider pro Palestinian. And I wanted to ask you, Paul, maybe it's to talk a little bit about how the polarization on this issue has affected tech, and maybe some of the response that you've gotten since this letter has gone this post has gone viral speaks to that because they're they're really this is really a battle ideologically in so many different sectors, but it's particularly hit tech this time.
It has hit tech.
I think what we have is that a lot of the top of tech, so investors, they're they're much more right wing, they're much wealthier, and a lot of the bottom of tech is is much more left wing, much more liberal. And the center tech is the sort of the founders at the start of their career. They are typically I would say that the junior founders are more left wing and the senior funders are more right wing as they get sort of more pulled into the institution that is Silicon Valley.
So it is it is an ideological thing.
And one of the funny things that keeps coming up is whenever you have Irish people in tech, they are they are predominantly left or they are predominantly on the side of Palestine. And the reason for that, of course, is that we we were a colony, we were an oppressed people, and we recognize what we see in Palestine.
And I think that a lot of the reason.
That that there's so much support for Israel in tech is that Silicon Valley was, you know, originally it was almost a dartback creation, right. There's a lot of alignment with the defense industry, with sort of with US interests.
You know, tech is very centered in the US and a lot of the people who are who are senior in tech are you know, part of the status quo and part of and this is even before we get into the the amount of cross investment with Israel and a lot of people making you know, making money by doing so. So there's a there's there's definitely a large
ideological component to this. The I I suppose that that I realized that, but I was surprised at how much ideology could go and enable the sort of extremist I mean, I'm just going to call it a genocide because that's what it is that's being enabled by Israel.
You would think that.
There were that there were lines that would never be crossed, and I think that's kind of what surprised me.
Yeah, and some of the comments you you flagged as kind of triggering the post when you mentioned matt Aco, you linked to one of his tweets where he's referring to Palestinians and he says there's not a lot of innocence of the two million routinely set a huge majority share one hundred percent of the sub human goals of hamas he puts free Palestine in quotes, because the cruelty
they delight in. The cruelty, the sub human savagery is intrinsic to the culture and the movement really kind of just literally dehumanizing language coming from you know, somebody that you had worked for, So I can imagine where this came from.
But I'm curious, you.
Know, how how brutal was this response from people you criticized, and what else did you hear in the wake of this?
In the two now almost two and a half weeks since this.
There's been a handful of people who I've seen make similar comments to to Madoca, the sort of dehumanizing comments, the sort of the sort of thing really people should regardless of what side you're on, no one should ever
say about about another human being. The tal Broda, it's not someone I know, but it's someone who is pretty senior at open Ai and someone who who was forced to apologize but wasn't actually removed from his job despite being a very senior executive at open Ai, which is one of the really important companies in tech right now.
He he had I don't have it, have a tan.
But extremely dehumanizing, in fact, worse worse than Madocco, I would say. Another one was Andrea Scale, who is a tech CEO, and he was well known for being the CTO of Mozilla, and he said equally dehumanizing stuff weeks ago, and I challenged him on it on Twitter before he made his account private. The I I would say that that the majority of what is out there is what I would term pro Israeli propaganda. It is taking the talking points that are coming out from these uh you know,
often from from Israel, sometimes from the IDF. There was this phenomenal discussion sub stack by by Lee Fang and Jack Poulson are who are independent journalists who were who chronicled the story of how Pati Cosgrave, who's the CEO of website, and how he got taken down, how he got fired. And so you start to see the same strategies and the same talking points coming from many, many
different investors. All of a sudden, Harvard was a really really important thing to talk about and anti Semitism in universities, that was the real discussion that everyone wants to talk about. And then you see that spread throughout the New York Times.
You see Clouding Gay eventually resigned, I think yesterday. You know, this is all part of a you know, all the same people with the same ideology controlling the conversation and making it impossible to say, well, there's thirty thousand people that have been killed by Israel, by Israeli soldiers dropping bombs on apartments. You know, it's like, how is it that on the one hand, we're talking about that, and on the other hand, you know, everyone's like tweeting about like.
Oh, from the River to the Sea. It's such a such a triggering term for me, you know.
And so since then, you've launched tech for Palestine, Like how did how did that come together?
So basically.
After after I posted that blog post, everyone reached out to me, and I just started taking meetings and just talking to people and seeing, you know, I had no real plans for it. And what what happened was I started connecting people together and eventually there became a discord, and eventually we launched publicly yesterday tech for Palestine dot org and we had, you know, another another three hundred people join our discord from the from the original sort
of tight group of about forty people. And basically, there's an awful awful lot of people in tech who are looking to make a difference, who are looking to you know, who see the genocide that's happening and say this, this is not okay, and who want to make a difference. And we're trying to help organize that, connect engineers and others to people who are who are doing projects and run projects ourselves and all of them are about changing
the ability to speak up about Palestine. It has been you as we've seen, it has been okay for people to say massively dehumanizing things so long as there as so long as they're pro Israel. Obviously we don't want and we don't see dehumanizing things being said by the supporters of Palestine, but we want to enable people to
say genocide is not okay. You know, having normal lives without having bombs dropped on you is a future that we want to see for Palestine and advocate for the end of what has been an incredibly long Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people.
You mentioned open Ai earlier, and it reminded me actually of Elon Musk's involvement both in Ukraine and obviously he famously went over to Israel I think it was just about a month ago, and so I'm curious us to
from that thirty thousand foot view. These are people that the people that you call out, the people that you work around, with enormous power and in some cases unregulated power at their fingertips, and this whole experience, I'm just curious as to what it tells you, maybe about the culture of tech and how ideology and power are kind of mingling in one industry with potentially devastating consequences, with potentially wonderful consequences, but largely in a way that makes
average people feel powerless in so many different cases.
There has long been this idea in tech that we are the people who know better than everyone else. I would say that the large shift in tech from by two thousand and seven onwards is that like the doers the engineers, we're the people who know better than everyone else, and so we we should get to control that and some Moltman, CEO of open Ai, was was a when he was leader of of y Combinator, which is one of the most influential sort of creator of startups in
the industry. He he made clear that, oh, the press has turned on Silicon Valley. The press has turned against us. We have to ignore what is being said in you know, in the population at large, and just focus on what we're doing because we know better. You see similar things
in Facebook. You know, Facebook is is massively powerful, and they were led by this internal idea that engagement and making money those are the things that that are are good for us, and that led to genocide and me and mar it led, of course to to the massive disinformation campaigns of the last couple of US elections. So tech, yes, it is. It is supremely powerful. It is it is
massively unregulated. And now as we're we're essentially being ushered into this new AI era, we see that people at the top of the most important AI organization are are
incredibly biased. And the bias is one of the problems that we are going to face throughout this this AI era because the the way that this data is trained, how people look at training these AI models, you know, the the biases of the people who collect and put together the data is reflected in the data, and that that is going to permeate into everything and already has. We're already seeing AI being used to target civilians in in Palestine, in Gaza, for example.
We're in China. Yeah.
Yeah.
And so you talked about how your first company became a unicorn. Did that kind of billion dollar valuation enable what you were able to do or how how difficult has your has your new company's financial situation been made by your decision to speak out.
I think one of the reasons that I spoke at is that I recognized I was in probably the best position from a risk perspective. So as an entrepreneur, I'm pretty risk averse anyway, sorry, pretty risk tolerant, and anyway, it's it's kind of fine.
It's it's what we do.
But also because I had cashed out a bit of my old company because I didn't have a you know, a financial risk really and also my my new company, dark Lane, I say, it's new, it's seven years old, it's not doing that well. And so our next round of funding would have been an angel round anyway, it would have been from you know, a bunch of hot, mid to high net worth individuals. It wouldn't have been talking to the same investors. And we had a plan to to be cash for positive and to get off
the VC track a little bit. Anyway, So it was, you know, I was pretty well positioned for it. And so it was something where where I realized that I had less to fear than most people. And when I posted and everyone reached out to me, and tons of people in tech, lots of founders were saying, we can't say anything. You know, these are our investors, these are the people we're afraid to speak out against.
Even though even though we know it's right.
So yeah, it's it's clear that that I was one of the few people who who had that risk profile, and so it made it easier to to take the stands.
It's interesting you say, because I kind of feel the same way sometimes, not financially speaking, but the news organization that where I work for, the Intercept, gives us like a total freedom to, you know, to say whatever we want about a particular issue, which most journalists don't have. So in some ways I feel kind of obligated to take that opportunity because because I have less less risk than others do. It kind of seems like, so I
understand the situation. It doesn't make it doesn't It doesn't make it less nerve wracking or difficult, but to not have the same kind of immediate consequences makes it more makes it more doable.
But anyway, Paul, you know, go ahead, and.
I know it's it's it's it's funny you mentioned that I gotta I got a piece published a bit a better new thing tech for Palestine published in tech Runch yesterday, which is, you know, having a pro Palestine piece in a tech publication is like rare but at the same time, you know, I looked through it and it was you know, it was edited very carefully to be Ah. Yeah, I guess what I'm saying is is that that one can perceive the amunds of censorship at news organization like you're saying.
Yeah, no doubt well, Paul, thanks so much for joining us, really appreciate it.
Thank you so much having me.
All right, that'll do it for us this week.
Yeah. And you know, Ryan, that's actually not for me.
I'll be back tomorrow.
That's right, you will be back with Crystal, So you're going to have just ab show. Yeah, so make sure that you macrodos. You want Ryan and Crystal uh talking about I don't know, presumably Israel taxes, yeah, or taxes.
Yeah. You know.
You said something interesting there though, which is reminds me also that Crystal and Saga give us really the freedom to that's true.
They certainly have never suggested that we restrict anything.
Yeah.
No, well, obviously sometimes they force us at you know, at risk of great force to talk about UFOs, But no, we were so we're so grateful for that here. And uh, you know, when I realized I mentioned China in that last interview segment. But AI is being used here in the United States to target civilians as well. It's we're seeing that deployed all of the world, and so we'll certainly be covering those things.
And to segue into that, it really is the audience that makes it possible. So therefore, go to Breakingpoints dot com. Become a premium subscriber. Tell me, you know, Sager, you'll maybe get a little discount.
Yeah, and we're kicking around a little Friday.
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