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So and last week I was last week I was in California, so people got to see it. The window behind me being completely dark in the beginning of the show and then by the end of it totally bright.
That's how long this goes.
It reflected how you felt throughout the show started really dark and got really light. Yes, all right, Well we have a huge news day because obviously we're going to start with updates from the Middle East. President Zelenski was here in Washington, d C. Yesterday he was meeting with people at the Capitol. He was meeting with President Biden.
So there are all kinds of updates because right now House Republicans House Democrats are figuring out and on the Senate side, how much money and in what sort of format that money should go towards Ukraine and go towards Israel as well. Tesla is in a fascinating union battle actually with Sweden that is starting to kick off. So we're going to go through some updates on that. We're going to talk about what just the agreement that was reached just last night at the COP conference in Dubai.
We did find out what COP stands for.
Yes, stick around and we will tell you what COP stands for.
Yeah, we're going to leave you in suspense because actually we were surprised, but.
I probably forget by the time we do that segment, but they did, they reached a deal not a great one, but it's a deal, and we'll talk about that.
And really important updates on the battle over Section seven two. You see FISA there on your screen. That's a block where we're going to talk about this real fight that's happening right now between the intelligence community kind of hawkish allies in the Senate and in the House. Here in Congress. I actually don't know what Biden would do. He'd probably want to keep seven to two.
But we're going to for sure.
And it's the most effective coalition ever I think put together, between the Progressive Caucus and the Freedom Caucus. And it'll be a real test of their strength this week whether they can deal a blow to mass surveillance.
We'll talk about that, and you know what, that's a good tease for next week. We have the new chairman of the Freedom Caucus, Bob good coming on. We expect to talk to him about Section seven oh two as well. Let's start with Israel, Bryan, because every day just incredible new updates, and incredible not in a good sense, incredible in the sense that you know, we have video we're actually going to play that looks like straight out of Call of Duty.
Yeah, and so the the news is kind of running on a couple of tracks here in Washington. They're talking about, you know, the day after the war in Gaza, people are just hoping that they can make it one more day, as kind of disease and starvation set in, and as the as the fighting pushes two million people into tighter and tighter confines. And so Joe Biden really kind of kicked off this this cycle with some back and forth with net Yahoo that we're going to get into.
Let's let's let's play a little bit of the.
Biden comments that really made news, and then we'll kind of decipher these folks.
Were there no Israel, there wouldn't be a Jew in the world was safe?
Were there?
And I was a thirty two year old senator and I wrote on the top of BB I love you, but I don't agree with the damn thing you had to say.
It's about the same today.
I love it.
The first is Joe Biden's kind of very idealistic, fifty year old kind of version of Zionism where he was where he says that this Honica celebration, you know, if it wasn't for Israel, you know, there wouldn't be a Jew anywhere in the.
World that was safe.
You had a lot of Jewish people around the world, particularly here in the United States, outrageously offended by that. It's an old saying from many decades ago kind of lost its balance, and it also feels strange coming from the President of the United States, you know, whose job is to protect everybody who's in the United States. Feels
like a're just throwing up of the hands. But it goes back to a kind of split in the in the kind of global Jewish community after the Holocaust, where you had some portion of survivors who say, you know, what we need is to double down on Zionism. We need a safe haven in Israel. We need to make we need to declare this estate. We need to do everything we can to protect and expand it and allow immigration from anywhere in the world. That's the only way
we're going to be protected. Another faction said, no, we need to lean into global justice. And that's why one reason you see kind of so many Jewish activists in the civil rights movement here in the United States but around the world saying the only path forward is through this and by creating justice around the world for everybody that will also free and liberate us and bring justice
to the Jewish community as well. And so Biden is really leaning in on the former one and saying that the no, that's impossible.
The only path forward is Israel.
Curious for your take on that, But to decipher his second point there, that's a story he's told multiple times where bb Neetna, who current Prime Minister, was in the Foreign Service in the Israeli embassy in the nineteen seventies when he met.
Joe Biden for the first time. It's wild fifty years ago.
Yeah, Biden signed an eight by eleven photo and he wrote on it, BB, I love you, but I don't agree with the damn thing you say. And then he added he's told that story a couple times in the past. What's new is he added this time. That's still the same today, and he added it again in a fundraiser later. So it is direct criticism. But we're going to talk about whether that actually means anything. Anything the president says means something because its simple sizes where the United States
is sitting. What the president does obviously matters more in any reaction to either of those.
Well, yeah, I mean exactly what you've been saying is that you've highlighted some reporting that Biden has been intentional about saying what his public posture is part of his strategy with net and Yahoo that when you hear what he's saying publicly, it's part of his private negotiations with not in Yahoo. So now we know that Biden is
telegraphing different things when and that's obviously not abnormal. But what I think is abnormal, especially in the relationship between the US and Israel, is the level of discomfort that the Biden administration has with the Net Yahoo administration at this point. And I know we're going to talk about that more, but that's part of what's incredible about the daily updates coming out of this conflict is that we have so much invested, like literally invested, financially invested, or
resources invested. And this in some ways parallels Ukraine, depending on you know, if you're a Republican or Democrat at this point, or what kind of Republican or Democrat you are at this point. But it's to be on different pages, and to be on such different pages, and to have that increasingly become a public dispute between the Biden administration and the Yahoo administration is terrifying.
Yeah, and so he zeroed in on that again at a fundraiser. If we can put up a two here to read this quote, he said, I think he in this nut yaw has to change and with this government, this government in Israel is making it very difficult for him to move. And he went on to say Ben Gavie is basically a nut. He's never he's never done. He's like, I've known every prime minister since gold In
my ear, it's true weird that he has. And he's saying that this is the most right wing government ever and he adds, you know, they don't want anything to do with Palestinians. They don't want a too state solution. But then, and here's the key point, and this is later on. This is right after his his remarks. He says, he says, you cannot say there's no Palestinian state at all in the future.
And that's going to be the hard part.
He's telling the Israeli government you cannot say there's no Palestinian state at all in the future. Then he says, but in the meantime, we're not going to do a damn thing other than protect Israel in the process, not a single thing. So if you're Israel and you're getting these two messages from President Biden, one you cannot keep saying that there's no that you're never going to allow Palistinian state. And also two, in the meantime, we're going
to do everything you ask us too. How are you going to receive that?
And this is exactly why I think it's terrifying, because again, you have a situation where we have absolutely no exit strategy, because an exit strategy that protects people in Israel and is humane for people in Gaza is not anywhere near a consensus point between the Israeli government and see Biden. To your point, Ryan gives Yahoo himself a little wiggle room by saying it's it's the government that net and Yahoo is dealing with that's pinning net and Yahoo in.
So I think Biden is being very intentional to the extent that he's capable of intentionality in foreign relations on his own at this point. But I think that's a clearly a strategic move to say, listen, I know those those extremists in your government, that's your problem. I understand. I empathize with you, and trying to sort of go manoamano with Yahou and say, I know you're coming from and they're making it very difficult for you. Let's be reasonable.
Let's be the reasonable ones here. But when you don't have any consensus on that next day plan and you just say, by the way, we don't even have consensus on the plan right now, which is to quote eradicate Hamas, that is not happening. And if you quote eradicate Hamas to some degree that you know, Biden says, we want to draw down this invasion into Gaza by about the first of the year. Okay, So if that's your strategy,
what does that mean, what does that look like? And did you just actually create a vacuum, a power vacuum that is not going to be the pals Palsittian authority is not going to step into that power vacuum and they don't even agree on what to do with the Palestinian authority.
Right and that so Netnya, who responded with that exact point, and Colvin, if we can skip a three for now and jump to a four.
This is a Wall Street.
Journal right up of Yaho's public public response to Biden. He put out a He put out a video in Hebrew saying basically, we are not going to allow the Palistinian authority UH to come into Gazah. And you know, once we've gotten rid of hamas he's a palstatiing authority, teaches hate, pays suicide bombers if they blow themselves up this and we're not going to go back to the
mistakes of Oslo, he says. The irony, of course, is that the Oslo process is what cemented the de facto annexation in creeping rule of the Israeli government over the disputed territories, the occupied territories, because the PLO in Oslo recognized the State of Israel, but did not get any recognition for s state in return. What they got instead was kind of just to be recognized as the negotiating
partner with Israel. But throughout the entire process, Israeli prime ministers are very clear that they were not endorsing even the idea of a Palestinian state. So it's interesting that even Oslo, which was so tilted toward Israel, which left us in this current situation with seven hundred and fifty thousand Israeli settlers in the West Bank and very little hope of ever getting to a Palestinian state absent some
cataclysmic change. Even that is seen by Nanyahu as kind of too too much like because it kind of just involved negotiations with Palestinian So he's saying, no, we're not even going to allow even the Palestinian authority, which is basically just a client of the of Israel, to rule Gaza. And that comes at the same time that his communications minister, if we can put up this next one things is a five and get your reaction to this. So this
is Nat Yahaw's communication Ministers. He says, we respect it, and this is the English translation, but it is pretty close. We respect and cherish the President of the United States, Joe Biden, who went out of his way during the most difficult period of the state of Israel.
This is true friendship. But we live here.
This is our country, the historical estate of our ancestors.
There will be no Palestinian state here.
We will never allow another state to be established between the Jordan and the Sea. We will never go back to Oslo, he said, echoing Yahou There and in the words of President Biden, the security of the Jewish people is at stake here. Definitely, Yes, a Palestinian state would
endanger him, thank you, mister President. So just being as clear as they ever possibly could that they have no intention of ever allowing a Palestinian state, yet claiming sovereignty as the liqud platform does, over everything from the river to the sea, which is then that those are the claimed borders. Basically, if they claim they have sovereignty over everything from the river to sea, that is de facto apartheid.
Saying that the people inside this region will never have statehood, never have sovereignty, won't have the same rights as the Israeli citizens of the state.
Well, I think it's really surreal to see that division in particular bubbling to the surface. And I'm going to read another quote from Biden here. He said, israel security can rest in the United States. But right now it has more than the United States. It has the European Union, it has Europe, it has most of the world supporting it. But they're starting to lose that support by an indiscriminate bombing that takes place. That's from the president of the industry.
So what would you make of that?
That's that's that's I mean it's obvious to me that if you look at and we can talk about the UN resolution in a moment where they got lost overwhelmingly.
But yeah, what did you make of that saying that.
The Biden actually warning is We're like, we've got you, but look out.
I think it's again the word that I land on here is surreal to hear him saying that, and then to see net Yaho's communications director tweeting that they're and net NYA, who himself has said no more to state solution.
And it's kind of interesting to think back on OSLO because this is now so far in the rear view mirror that, you know, whatever you think of the decisions that led us to October seventh, we're in a situation now where there's almost a realism to the net and Yaho outlook here that's like, well, what is a peaceful coexistence?
There is no legitimate path to peace anymore. This is you know, after in this you can you can talk about the United States policies in the Middle East as well that have to some degree like really stoked the flames and really stoked the flames of extremism in the Middle East in a way that talking about power vacuums.
How long has it been since the Arab Spring? Now, I mean, we've seen how this has turned out, and we now know what if you want to have the state of Israel from the river to the sea, the degree of I think violence and the degree of all of that. And that's exactly what they're saying, by the way, that there is no two state solution anymore. There's no peaceful coexistence anymore. And I think that's interesting to kind of look back on Oslo and say, we're in a
very very different place. That's what this underscores.
And the Israeli ligned for decades has been there is no partner for peace. And in order to make sure that that was true, what the Israelis have done over the decades is gone. They have assassinated so many of the Palestinian leaders who were more moderate and were trying to reach a peace deal.
The interest of elevating Hamas, you mean.
Right, and the function was to elevate Hamas. Even within Hamas, there was you know, a very a charismatic kind of senior official within Hamas, I forget his name, who was stridently opposed kind of to suicide bombings and to attacking civilians. There was a huge faction within kind of the Palstine Liberation movement, generally Fatah Hamas others who said that it's counterproductive, it's you know, as Talaran said, it's worse than a crime.
It's a mistake that all of the goodwill of the Palestinians had built with the first mostly nonviolent for a long time. Intifada was evaporated when they started killing civilians. So stop killing civilians is real killed that guy and others who were making that same argument, and then they were able to accurately say, well, look who's left no partner for peace anymore, and so therefore we can just you know, continue on without any any peace deal. It's
starting to roll throughout the Middle East. Colvin, we can go back to that one that we skipped on eighth three ree, which is the houthis Yemen Yemen Houthy's have you know they hit another they hit a Nigerian tanker. That was they've now said, any any tankers that are going near Yemeni waters, which is some of the most important in the world, uh that are bound for coming from Israel are now you know, clean fair military targets uh.
They they they put out that kind of dramatic footage with a helicopter landing and seizing a ship a week or two ago. And the US that now the Houthis are about to reach a peace deal with Saudi Arabia and the UAE to end this you know, years long war. The US, before this crisis in Gaz that broke out, had been doing everything it could to try to blow up this peace deal because the UE and Saudi have lost so badly that the Houthis are you going to come out of these peace negotiations in a good place?
And so.
The US has been throwing all these monkey rans into trying to make it so that they.
Can't reach a deal.
Now they're saying if they keep attacking tankers that they're going to list them as kind of state sponsors of terror.
And then the number one thing that the Huthies want, which is to be able to pay their public servants, Like that's the big fight, because Saudi Arabia has managed to seize basically all of the revenue and of all of Yemen's money, and so all of these teachers, government workers and others are just working without pay like for years now, and So the key thing is they want that money like pay our workers in the world reach a peace deal, and the US is saying, well, we're
going to designate you state sponsors of terror, which means then you can't get that money because then that has all kinds of banking implications, which then the questions will then what then the war starts up again, the war that they were already losing.
I mean, yeah, do you have any confidence that any of the people negotiating this are doing any of this in the interest of peace and the interest of safety.
And this is another thing that the realism, I think, which I'm sympathetic to at times, gets complicated by not knowing, Like there's so many hypotheticals involved, like we're going to take this step at point A, and it's likely to lead the point B, but we don't know that it's going to lead to point B. And that takes us back to what we were just talking about with Israel, is that like there's this step one, step two process, and the US and Israel openly do not agree on
what's step two of this extremely expensive, costly and I'm talking in terms of human life. There's also obviously taxpayer money involved, but primarily human life, this costly conflict. We don't even agree we are in world in this and we don't even agree on step two with the end game. But we don't actually agree on step one either. We
don't agree on what happens. When Joe Biden says January first has come around, the Biden administration says January first has come around quote indiscriminate bombing, that's Biden conceding, by the way, that's he is in his country is supporting indiscriminate bombing. That was funding indiscriminate framing.
Yeah.
Absolutely, And I think the interest of the United States obviously should be peace, the security of people in Israel,
the safety of people in Israel. And that's a thing that I also find terrifying, is that does anyone believe that the steps we're taking right now when you have the President of the United States condemning quote indiscriminate bombing, supporting the quote indiscriminate bombing, but also in totally like it is not a fine line between a two state solution and a no two state solution like that is that's not a minor disagreement. That is the single.
Biggest disgress I think state. We don't.
It's the single biggest disagreement that you could possibly have on this question. And the two countries that are most responsible for perpetuating this war, for prosecuting this war not you know, I'm not saying the US and Israel started the war, but the two countries that are right now funded and fighting the war don't agree on what the war is being fought for.
Right And so that's the geopolitics of the situation. On the ground in Gaza, things are deteriorating. Yesterday the New York Times we can put up this next one published a remarkable editorial from a coal basically the leaders of a coalition of human human rights and basically relief organizations like these are people whose job it is to go to war zones to if there's an earthquake, if there's
a civil war, if there's a tsunami. You know, these are the people whose organizations go there to try to clean up the mess that was left either by man or by nature. And they're saying, we have never seen anything like what we're witnessing now. One of the poignant things that I thought that I that I pulled from this was the way that their their staff are telling them that they can't really leave their house, like so that they're nervous because if they leave their house, are
going to get killed. But then and then they're also nervous that if they leave their house, their family might get killed without them.
So they're making these decisions.
Do we all stay in the same room so that if, if, and when we're killed, we all die together we don't have to suffer the sorrow of going on with with nobody else. Or do we separate so that somebody can survive and that somebody can carry on kind of the legacy of this family. Meanwhile, these are the people whose job it is to distribute aid aid which isn't getting in because of the blockade. The hundreds of trucks were
needed every single day before October seventh. Now you have sometimes one hundred or two hundred getting in, but workers can't get to warehouses.
You know, the workers can't distribute it.
And they said they're very very close to a complete breakdown of order. You can imagine, you know, you see what happens like firefest Within like two hours, everybody there is just like looting the place and going nuts. You know, we're two months into this situation where two million people on top of each other without access to much food. People are talking about half of a meal a day, without access to clean wild without access to sanitary bathrooms.
They warned that diseases, disease and starvation are spreading rapidly.
Yeah, well, speaking of the health concerns, we can put the next element up on the screen, doctor Teedras of the World Health Organization, which is really really see as in the same way that the UN and they.
Think they're hamas they think everybody.
They definitely have to make some interesting ethical questions to operate in Gaza, which is obviously that we need to have human rights organizations and humanitarian causes on the ground in Gaza, and even Israel knows that. But obviously Israel believes they've made some dubious moral calculations in order to function in Gaza. So Tedra says that he's extremely worried about reports of a raid at a hospital in Gaza.
After several days of siege, there are sixty five patients, according to the Ministry of Health, including several and needing intensive care. Of forty five medical staff in the hospital. The hospital is already minimally functional due to acute shortage
as of fuel, water, food, and medical supplies. Then he said, who urgently calls for the protection of all persons inside the hospital and calls for an immediate ceasefire and for sustained humanitarian access to health facilities across the Gaza strip. We've seen that, you know, on a daily basis. Basically these like horrifying humanitarian concerns and hospitals and all of that for more than two months now, and it's not
going anywhere. It's not like there's a point where we're just not gonna you know, the hospitals are going to be fine, They're going to be functioning. We're nowhere near that.
Yeah, And so that raid has in the last few hours has been carried out. Doctor Hosam Abu Sphia said there was a strike that hit them, hit their maternity ward, killing two people, injuring two women, firing them to be amputated. There were I believe it says that the troops, the Israeli troops then pulled all men aged sixteen to sixty five out of the building. And then CNN ominously said this interview was conducted Monday. Then they write CNN was unable to reach doctor Alkalott on Tuesday.
Sounds like he also was rounded up.
There have been very credible, you know, on record accounts of torture and beatings at the hands of his Israeli forces.
They've after they've rounded this.
The men up, beating them in front of you, beating
you boys, some of them in front of others. So it sounds like these medical professionals are as we speak, you know, rounded up somewhere undergoing you know, at at very best interrogation, at worst beating, beating, in torture, which then leaves open the question of what became of the patients who were left in this in this hospital, as we know that that has not been a priority, as we saw with the case of the of the premature babies who were left to die after assurances were given
that they would be taken care of.
And just to sort of like to bring the segment maybe full circle, if you are the people of Israel and not even talking about the government. Obviously the supplies to the government too, and you it's even put land aside, but you're concerned about the safety and security of your
own people. What the hell are you supposed to do? Right? Now, I just it's it's obviously easy to be here in d C in a studio, you know, talking about this, but there's a it's obviously an incredibly difficult conversation to have. It always has been. It's it's never gotten any easier,
and it's not certainly not easy now. But to have so much disagreement over what the actual plan is here as people are dying by the thousands and there are these these awful series of suffering and by the way, the body of an Israeli woman was recovered yesterday, a twenty eight year old woman was recovered in a tunnel in Gaza yesterday, hostage one of the hostages.
Yeah, for more reason that a ceasefire and negotiations to release the hostages while they're still alive is paramount and is just is so quickly pushed to the side. You know, you had net Yahoo's ministers saying in the middle of these hostage negotiations during the last seasefire, saying, if.
We don't resume this war, we're going to bring the government down.
These same ministers at the very end had said we need to not we need to be cruel and not think over much of the hostages, and again and again we hear from Israeli ministers things that we just don't kind of absorb here in the United States, the.
UN we should move on. Voted for voted for seas for not surprising to anyone yesterday, but that was.
The lop sided vote. Was something else here we put this next element up.
Yeah, so that was they took a formal vote on ceasefire yesterday. And I don't think any of those numbers are surprising, right.
One hundred and fifty three countries around the world voted in favor of a ceasefire, twenty three countries abstained, and ten, including the United States, voted no. Interestingly, and we're about to talk about Ukraine. Ukraine abstained, So the United States coalition of no voting countries did not even include Ukraine.
It's like a Paraguay and like some others who were.
Like, we don't have any choice, like some you read them, you're like, oh, they're a country. They're basically just a like protectorate of the United States somewhere in the Pacific. And so that's that's our coalition at this point.
What's interesting is people probably remember that Israel had been pressured by the United States and other major powers to send weapons and munitions and stuff to Ukraine earlier in that conflict and resisted it and with good obviously, and they clearly underestimated the threat from Hamas. But that's probably still weighing very heavily on the mind of Vladimir Zelenski, and we can get to that. In just a moment. Ryan flagged this Haretz article that is interesting. This is
the next element up on the screen. The headline here is graphic videos and incitement. How the IDF is misleading Israeli's on telegram in the context of the conversation we were just having about the way the Israeli government is prosecuting this war and the end goal of safety and security of the Israeli people. You say your net in Yahoo, and your ultimate goal here is not. His goal isn't to protect the world. His goal is to protect the
Israeli people. Even if that's your goal, what is he doing in a way that actually is making that goal more and more likely? This, I think raises some questions about that. What did you find interesting about the Harezz piece.
Israeli law allows the military, the IDF to run what they call kind of information warfare, psychological warfare abroad. If you're trying to influence populations in other countries, you're trying to do propaganda basically, like that's allowed. They are not allowed to do propaganda inside Israel directed at the Israeli people.
In twenty fourteen, Haretes busted them at the time running this gigantic propaganda operation where they were publishing just like horrific scenes of carnage coming out of the twenty fourteen Gaza war to show to the Israeli public, like look at what we're doing in here. And so according to Haretz, this operation here run on telegram which is called seventy two Virgin seventy two Virgins uncensored. This is a telegram channel is in fact a direct product of the IDF.
The IDF denied it to Haretz, but Haret stands by its reporting. Here at the very end of the article, they say they even, I haven't seen this in an American article. I like the kind of repetition of it. Let me see if I can find it here. And this is the final article of the piece. It says in a statement, the IDF spokesperson's unit said seventy two
Virgins is not operated on the IDF's behalf. If there was any connection by soldiers or other parties connected to the IDF with the page or its operation, this was done without approval and without authority unquote. However, Haretz reports as mentioned a senior military official confirmed that the channel was systematically operated by IDF personnel. And we can put up some just images of kind of what is being produced,
but your imagination doesn't have to go too far. They were talking about as you're seeing there, you know, people being dragged through the streets, one Palestinian getting run over multiple times kind of by a jeep. You know, the flattening of buildings, and coupled with the most racist, over the top type of kind of language directed at the
victim of this that you could possibly imagine. And this goes back to your question earlier, where you were saying, what is Israel going to do to keep its people safe? Rather than answering that question, what a lot of Israel politicians seem to be doing is what are they going to do to kind of make the public who is braying for revenge feel like they're getting it? And this is one of those things just putting up just this horrific kind of a combat and a lot of it
isn't even combat porn. There's this mutilation porn of human beings. To then say, look, you wanted revenge, We're giving you revenge, and forget about all of our failures leading up to October seventh.
Yeah, there was an interesting point when Biden, this was a couple of weeks ago, he was calling for a ceasefire, and there were some people on the left in Israel who were really upset by that and said, you know what, was Ben Giverer saying at that point something like I'll throw the government into chaos, something like that, I'll bring down the government something like that over the any agreement towards a ceasefire, and some people on the left, I'm
not saying everybody, but I'm saying there were people on the left saying that we're with Bengevier. We don't feel safe if there's a ceasefire. We don't feel as though the appropriate measures towards protecting us will have been taken if at that point a few weeks ago there was
a ceasefire. And that's really interesting. I think that's actually a really interesting kind of contrast with the way some people on the left here have talked about the conflict, but it doesn't make those questions any less important about whether a ceasefire versus a continued sort of what a Joe Biden said, qute indiscriminate bombing in Gaza is making people any more or less safe. And that's as we
were talking about this in the last segment. These questions, when you're engaged in kind of real politic about hypotheticals, become impossible, and that makes it really really hard for Yahoo to say that pushing this incursion into Gaza into January is making the people of Visraal anymore safe. You sort of need evidence, and I think that's where Ryan, to your point, they're relying on some of this to
give them cover. They're relying on some of us to give them sort of ongoing justification to augment what they're saying needs to happen in Gaza. And you know, good on Heratz for reporting this out and for kind.
Of scooping this.
Yeah, and the propaganda war is going back and forth between Hamas and the IDF. Hamas from the very beginning was putting out these kind of slick hype videos followed by a lot of kind of very explicit videos of direct combat now followed the IDF, as the IDF was then getting criticized because it put out, you know, it put out put out videos of people like just shooting in a school and it wasn't clear that there was
anything else going on. Put out all those videos of the shirtless men, many of whom were then immediately identified as civilians, And so now they're starting to put out videos of actual combat where it's very clear, Okay, there is now we know there's combat going on.
Casualties numbers are coming out of there.
But the IDF is now countering with some of that combat footage, some of it really quite something and nothing like we've really seen on a kind of.
Global level ever.
And I was gonna say, again, from the real politique perspective, propaganda is, you know, I think it's obviously always been a part of that, like for longer than we even have records. Rapaganda is a part of war, but it's very I think we're not used to in the twenty first century yet. I think we're not used to it in the era of social media yet. And some of what the IDEF has been putting out has looked really ham fisted and just also odd. It's looked really just weird.
And again that's easy to say from here in DC and from the West, but it's it's just a it's a very strange thing and it seemed clumsy, I guess over the course the last couple of months.
Yeah, and Colvin, I don't know.
Do we have a twelve that's if people are curious about the actual countries and how they voted. Oh, yeah, there it is, so you can just pause on that and kind of scroll through there if you're curious.
But from Holal flow are front there you go.
So we Papa, New Guinea, Paraguay, Micronesia, Nahru, Liberia, Guatemala, Israel, like those, Austria. Yep, those are basically the countries that's stuck with the United States.
Abstentions from some major countries as well.
You see their Germany, the UK, right, Yeah, the UK asties is a real blow to the United States Argentina coalition to continue killing it's shrinking.
So it's it's the Biden. This is if you're if you're Joe Biden, you're looking at these numbers right now. Again, this is actually not that unusual for how the UN votes in regards to Israel. I mean, it's obviously pressure, although you have UK Germany, Italy abstaining. But this is not surprising to anyone whatsoever. I'm sure it didn't come
as any type of shock to the Biden administration. But that ongoing split between Biden and Yahoo makes these numbers all the more worse, because Biden then has to defend something he clearly no longer wants to defend.
Voladimir Zelenski was in Washington yesterday meeting with Senators and also meeting with representatives of the military industrial complex, thanking them for their work and leading with members of Congress to keep the aid flowing less the entire project collapse.
We can put up this first image.
Here we go, Eric Williams pro doctor mean, yeah, well, we're thankful that we have SASH friends.
I've just signed another two hundred million dollar draw down to the Department of Defense for Ukraine and that'll be coming quickly.
Thank you much.
Now, if you were just listening to that, you heard the robust White House fire crackling in the background. But that's quite a nice touch, Ryan, that was President. So if you're again, if you're listening, what you saw was Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell walking through the capital with Vladimir Dea Zelenski, different senators, members of Congress swarming him like their backstage at a Jonas Brothers concert. Basically is what it looks like. And Schumer said something like, we had
a quote very good and productive meeting. Then Zelensky appeared to have a pretty good meeting with President Biden yesterday. Well really didn't face tough questions while he was here, at least not publicly. Ryan. But on the next point, House speaker Mike Johnson, who Ryan and I will we promised to continue our weekly updates as to whether he is a real person, and we can re up our confirmation that he continues to be real despite having the
most generic white man name imaginable. Mike Johnson, let's actually.
A white man necessarily middle It's just.
Like, yeah, it is just an American name. You're right, Thank you for calling me on my non inclusive language.
Here's here's my Spencer Johnson.
It's not Spencer Johnson. But what we're going to roll is this tape here, and bear in mind that the House has very little time left to fund the government and is bitterly fighting over all kinds of different goodies in Ukraine is obviously on the table. Here's what Speaker Mike Johnson said yesterday.
We need a clear articulation of the strategy to allow Ukraine to win, and thus far their responses have been insufficient. They have not provided us the clarity and the detail that we requested over and over since literally twenty four hours after I was handed the gavel as Speaker of the House.
And so what the.
Biden administration seems to be asking for is billions of additional dollars with no appropriate oversight, no clear strategy to win, and none of the answers that I think the American people are owed.
President Zelensky made it so clear how he needs help, but if he gets the help, he can win this war. And he outlined in some great detail a the kind of help he needs and how it will help him win. Even many of our Republican colleagues talked about we are winning this war and if we get the help that if he gets the help he needs, he will win.
Right.
Okay, so that was obviously Chuckie Schumer. But what's so funny there is when he says, even my Republican colleagues, he's just talking about Mitch McConnell. Even these even Mitch and even you know, because.
We explain to people how far out on a limb Mitch is related to the rest of his conference on this, or at least a big faction of the conference he said.
He has said, this is an almost amazingly like impossible quote, but he has really said that it's the most important thing that they're doing right now is funding Ukraine, and that's for the domestic This is not a domestic hot war. This is obviously on another continent. It's not to downplay the importance of it. I think it obviously does have
implications for the United States. But for the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to say that when there's so much suffering and business to be taken care of in the United States, that is how far out on a limb he is. And it's becoming increasingly problematic with about ten
Republican senators, so you know they're ard. The Senate is almost completely split, so ten isn't a huge block, but it's enough to cause serious problems for Mitch McConnell, especially because you have about ten senators who are increasingly aligned with what Mike Johnson just said. There's a huge contract between what Mike Johnson said on He has yet to hear quote a clear articulation of strategy. This is a fairly establishment Republican saying that Kevin McCarthy had similar concerns
about Ukraine. He really made it possible for the Mike Johnson's of the world to start publicly expressing their concerns about Ukraine when he said we don't want a blank check about a year ago, and obviously from a strategic standpoint, that was an olive branch to the Freedom Caucus and maybe kept them at bay, kept the Matt Gatess at bay for another six months something like that. So mission accomplished.
Kind of true. Haven't heard of him lately.
The big news out of the White House was that they're open to this hardline kind of their immigration proposal border proposal that Republicans have saying. Republicans have said, look, you want Ukraine money, Yes you can have it, but to get it, you have to do our bill on the border, not like some compromise immigration yeah plan, but basically you have to just rubber stamp our bill, and the White House was signaling yesterday that they're actually open to that.
What did you make of that?
Yeah, that's always been I actually think we've talked about this for weeks. If there will be any compromise struck before the end of the year, and as this funding is on the table, it's going to be over immigration, I would have zero optimism because Republicans have no leverage.
I'm fairly supportive of HR two, that's the bill that they're talking about, which would basically redo the asylum system here, which is at the heart of a lot of the problems that are happening at the border and are happening in South and Central America. But that said, the reason the White House wants to negotiate with it is because
they know Republicans have basically no leverage. And that's where the Freedom Caucus comes in and is going to like the odds that all of this gets completely torpedoed and Speaker Mike Johnson is out on his butt in a couple of weeks are honestly really high, because what Republicans don't want to do is allow Biden to say he took tough steps to control the border because he negotiated with Republicans on HR two and sent more or funding to ICE and CBP and sent more funding to the border,
drones and all of that stuff, which is part of HR two. And so it allows him to compromise and say I negotiated to pass part of this bipartisan bill. If he doesn't touch the asylum situation, it basically doesn't matter. You can fund the border as much as you want, it doesn't matter if you don't reform that central part of it. And so that's what's really a problem for
Mike Johnson. And when Chuck Schumer said, quote that Zelensky provided quote kind of the kind of help he needs, he described the quote kind of help he needs to win the war. That's a huge contrast with Mike Johnson saying there was no clear articulation of strategy. So these are some real sticking points going ahead in the next couple of weeks.
And this is where we get to the weird incentives that our political system produces. Because on the one hand, Republicans want border security like that's they've been running on the wall, built the wall, that's 'es central to their whole thing.
At the same time, mass numbers of.
Migrants at the border and chaos at the border is a political as they see it, a political gift to them, like that's good for them.
So it reminds me.
Of that saying, you know, it's very difficult to convince somebody of something, you know, if their paycheck depends on not understanding it.
It's very difficult to get.
A political party to solve something if support for them depends on them not solving the issue. On the flip side, Democrats constantly tell their base that they're not for these hardline type migration policies, but they would like nothing more than to have the Republicans kind of force their hands to do a crackdown so that they don't have to think about it anymore.
Yeah. It's weird though, because there's part of the Republican argument is that allowing you know, this this unstanched flow into the country is good for Democrats because you know, everyone who when they're when they're natural, everyone is just going to vote Democrat. Like there are just a.
Publicly believe when they start looking at their own.
Polling numbers like oh wait, yeah, we actually can win these these folks votes.
The Rio Grand Valley yeah, absolutely, it.
Doesn't seem to register.
No, it's like this gigantic democratic scheme to let in all of these brown people who then end up voting Republican.
Yeah, what kind of democratic scheme is that.
Well maybe after like ten years, but yes, yeah, they can't vote for ten years anyway. No, I mean, well, but that's the problem, And I mean I think that's why these it's not necessary, like HR two is not necessarily a hard line. It is in that it would make it really hard for people with dubious asylum claims to come here, live in sanctuary cities like in the Shadows,
and maybe never have a path to naturalization. I think that's what's so sad about a lot of this is that unless and some of them bank on this, Unless there's huge reforms that broaden what an asylum claim is, are broad in what a legitimate refugee claim is. In the United States, there's not a path to naturalization for a lot of people who are fundamentally and admittedly they'll tell you this economic migrants. That's not the same as asylum.
These are two different categories, and that's what HR two is trying to deal with is kind of streamlining what constitutes asylum, so that you don't have people coming here and you're going to San Francisco and just trying to stay there until the law changes and just straight by and just trying to get by living in pretty sad conditions. And so the question of what's hardline anymore, I don't even know. After how many years of a failled immigration.
Policy, I'm surprised that since they're combining immigration and Ukraine here, I'm surprised that none of the senators have done the most cynical thing yet, which is say we'll just draft them and send them over to Ukraine and train them and put them in the front lines, and then after they fight for the US over and Ukraine, they can
come back here. Because this goes to a little he's from Eric Watson here, if we can put up this next element, Zelenski told senators that Ukraine is considering description of men over forty to bolster frontline troops or Senator that's from Senator Wicker as a man over forty like WHOA, Yes, I thought I missed my window where I was going to get drafted and to go killing, to go kill
somebody or get killed. But this goes to the a fundamental problem that Ukraine has, which is, you know, they've something like seven hundred thousand people can check the exact stat military age men have left Ukraine, yes, and one hundred thousand plus have been killed, many more wounded. You can only fight for so long, and so we could send you know, military hardware and weapons over there endlessly, but at some point they start running out of people,
whereas Russia does not run. Even if you take the US weeks this week at face value and say that Russia has lost three hundred thousand plus troops of something like an army of three hundred fifty thousand to start with, they've done going through a mobilization that is bringing hundreds of thousands of more. It's just a look at the map. It's just a much bigger country. And so now if they're going to have to move to people over forty than.
What, Yeah, and that brings up a hugely I think it should just a pathetic question as to whether the will of Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer and elite politicians in DC to wage this war is more powerful here than it is among the Ukrainian people. When you start talking about scriptures of men over right.
Obviously, there are many who are like deeply committed to the fight see it as existential to them.
Absolutely.
Obviously, if you have to start conscripting people over forty's it's not enough.
Yes too. Yeah, when the United States cares so much about the contested territory in the Dambas that they are funding a government that is conscripting men over the age of forty, you really have to ask that question as to whether this is more important to Mitch McConnell than it is to the majority of the Ukrainian people. I think that is a very good point. There's a lot of support in Ukraine for the war, there's no question
about that. But at the same time, we are how many years into it at this point, and the levels that we know of death, yeah, two years in February. The levels that we know of death right now are staggering. I mean, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of people
who have died over the last couple of years. At a certain point, you feel that much more acutely in Ukraine than you do in the United States, and that is a that is I think a very kind of pathetic contrast and will be brought out more going forward.
Fascinating clash in the EU in Sweden in particular, between the kind of Tesla's anti union model we can put this up here, which relies on non union labor to build Tesla's versus the very strong industrial unions of Europe who are now engaged in they've kind of there's a very kind of small, relatively small fight, kind of one hundred I think it's one hundred and thirty four metal workers we're not even putting together, necessarily not working in
the Tesla plant, but they're working with Tesla Mechanics.
Yeah, and.
They they in collaboration with unions around the country, are trying to shut Tesla down to force them into bargaining.
And across the EU you have these like you're saying it rippled into Danish transport workers and that's the big news this week, saying in solidarity with the Swedish mechanics is about one hundred and thirty of them, which isn't much in the grand scheme of Tesla's operations. They're not unl loading Tesla's like, they're not taking them off of ships, they're not going to ship them any more. In solidarity with the Swedish workers that have been on strike for about a month now.
Yeap oh, and let's pause for a little bit of like labor history and theory here, which.
Because I was hoping you would, because that's a part of why I suggested.
We do this.
Yeah, and I'm glad one of these articles did make the point which is so key for people to understand kind of labor politics. They write, Unlike many other European countries, Sweden has no legally enforced the minimum wage and little in the way of statutory labor market regulation. The very beginning of the labor market movement in like the nineteenth century here in the United States, the labor movement was
stridently opposed to minimum wages and to other kind of regulators. No, there were four regulations against child labor and things like that.
But they live, but they did not write.
But they did not want the state to come in and set a minimum wage because from their perspective, what the state giveth, the state can take it away, and it would be better to build mass worker power and just set wages and say, like, it doesn't matter what the state says, you have to pay us.
This is what we want, and you don't have a choice.
You're paying us as we see what your profit numbers are, we see what you can pay, and you know you're going to get a little bit of a profit. We're going to and work, but we who are providing the value are going to get are going to get the rest of it. And so that has prevailed in Sweden because Sweden has such strong industrial unions. They're like, don't worry about a minimum wage. So then a tesla comes
in and they're like, oh, no minimum wage. Interesting, Okay, let's let's see what we can get away with here. And you can see why that is a threat to the entire system. And so the unions have to come in and say, I don't care if it's one hundred and thirty four workers, like, you're paying the prevailing wage. If you don't, we're shutting you down. And pretty much across Sweden there's support for this because you the entire kind of culture under stands that their.
Prosperity depends on this arrangement.
Even as they kind of sweetened and drifting recently into right wing territory, there's still this broad support for you know, making sure that you can make a middle class wage at a typical job in Sweden.
And that's why this is such a fascinating class. We can put the Jacobin article up on the screen. This was a really I highly recommend reading this article because I think it outlines the stakes globally really well. In the stakes for actually one of the biggest companies in the world at this point, they're right. On one side is Tesla, by far the world's most valued automaker, currently
valued higher than the next nine car companies combined. I think it is so important to remember that about Tesla's you know, it's the cyber truck, and Elon and x It's, you know, become sort of a punching bag. But in terms of car companies, this is enormously, enormously powerful. It has one hundred and thirty thousand workers, jack up and
continues the two top best selling EV models. On the other side is the Swedish Metal Workers Union, a union with two hundred and thirty thousand members, organizing eighty percent of all workers in its sectors, with a large membership that has not taken party in many strikes. The union has amassed a war chest of about one billion dollars and it's able to pay striking workers one hundred and thirty percent of their salary. So this already has been
going on since October. The strike has already been going on since October. It has rippled into other countries. It's rippled into electricians and dock workers and jacobin ads. If either side caves, it will have profound impacts across Sweden. If the unions lose, it might spell the end of the Swedish norm based labor market system of high unionization rates,
sectoral bargaining and few regulations. If Tesla uses, it will be the If Tesla loses, it will be the first union with which the company has been forced to negotiate. So there you have one of the most powerful car companies, one of the most high valued car companies in the world, potentially having a serious threat to its non union business model because of one hundred and thirty workers in Sweden who have workers around the EU striking in solidarity with them,
and TUSLA refusing to negotiate. Ryan, I actually think the most likely outcome here, and you've covered this more closely than I have for years, so you I'm curious what you think. I think Elon is just going to pull out of Sweden.
Oh straight up pull out of Sweden, rather than because he doesn't want to set a precedent that.
I don't know.
I mean, I think this depends on it depends on how it depends on how useful Sweden, you know, the Swedish production is to his supply chain in Europe, and how important that is. I think you could, if you're Elon, you know, rationalize it and be like.
Look, it's Sweden.
Of course we're in a union, like like okay, but that doesn't mean that you here, you know, in the United States need to be in a union. And I think he's I appreciated his one remark that he made about unionization here in the United States.
He said, if we wind up with a union, we deserved it.
And one of the powers in the positive elements of the union movement is to put pressure on bosses.
He raised salaries like.
Elon Musk right exactly.
In fact, in some ways, the best the best situation. If let's say you're at you're never going to get this, but let's say you get to ninety percent union density in the auto industry. Oftentimes the people who are best off are that are the other ten percent because the bosses are so scared of getting of them getting unionized
that they push salaries even pay even higher. Now, the unions are good at protecting jobs as well, so that you know, you can't be you know, arbitrarily disciplined and you know, otherwise cracked down upon.
So that's different.
But when it comes to just wages and kind of benefits, the you know, the pressure of unions pushes them up. You saw Toyota Honda after the uaw's big deal. You know, quickly, you know, reach out to their workers and be like, hey, here's a little extra because as Sean Fain told me in an interview I did for my podcast, that they're just getting a deluge of messages from auto workers at non union plants saying like, please come in and organize
our plant. Yes, and that in the past had been the big hurdle that they would go to a plant and they'd be outside of it, going to the grocery stores, going to the bars, trying to meet workers that they could then talk into like being allies of theirs on the inside, rather than workers just organically and reaching out and saying, please come in and unionize us and that's the difference between kind of a tight labor market and a loose one.
And to the actually your point about Elon and Sweden, I mean, this guy is doing business China, so that is trying to spread quote socialism with Chinese characteristics, and he is lavishing.
She didn't ping in praise, so capitalism with Swedish characteristic.
Capitalism with characteristics. So but this is actually I think that the Jacobin article, which is actually written I think by folks in Sweden who point out that Swedish union density is down for like eighty percent, but it's down to like sixty two percent, so still a country with
pretty high union density. But the stakes here, I think for both sides absolutely are very high, and especially Ryan in light of what we're about to talk about next, which is the climate deal that was struck last night.
Dubai decided that it was going to be the best place to host the climate change conference called COP twenty eight. So as first of all, it's kind of perfect. Really it is perfect. We did figure out what COP stands for. Yes, ex tribute questions, Ask yourself, do you know what COP stands? Where it's COP twenty four, COP twenty last you know Copenhagen.
Conference of Parties.
It's again perfect if you parties. A lot of people came into this show today wondering, A, is Mike Johnson still a real person? And B what does COPS stand for? And by the end of the show we have answered successfully those two questions.
Sort of because it's Conference of Parties of the un FCC. Well, I see, I can't even remember of the framework on the Climate Change Agreement or whatever that is. It's a bunch of countries that get together to try to agree on a path forward. Before they reached a deal. Early this morning, Al Gore unleashed on the kind of conference and shame them a little bit with well, actually, so let's put.
This put this up here. This is al Gore.
COP twenty eight is now on the verge of complete failure. The world desperately needs to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible. But this obsequious draft reads as if opak Opek dictated it word for word.
It is even worse than many had feared.
It is of the Petro States, by the Petro States, and for the Petro States. It is deeply offensive to all who have taken this process seriously, twenty four hours left to show whose side the world is on the side that wants to protect community's future by kickstarting and orderly phase out of fossil fuels, or the side of the petro states and the leaders of the oil and
gas companies that are fueling the historic climate catastrophe. In order to prevent COP twenty eight from being the most embarrassing and dismal failure in twenty eight years of international climate negotiations, the final text must include clear language on phasing out fossil fuels. Anything else is a massive step backwards from where the world needs to be to truly address the climate crisis and make sure that one point five degree centigrade.
Goal doesn't die.
In Dubai, they did finally come to agreement on phrasing around phasing out fossil fuels against the interest obviously of any fossil fuel producing companies countries, but environmentalists and climate change climatehawks are still saying that it doesn't it doesn't really create any path, you know, toward getting there. It's it's good that they acknowledge it and said that they're going to within ten years kind of you know, transition
away from fossil fuels. It includes big stops to natural gas, which is a big priority of Russia, other other U s major natural gas producers, the EU, which is building
a gigantic terminal for liquid natural gas. A lot of developing countries and stretches in the south, you know, are are very angry about the fact that there's no financing and no plan to say okay, Nderia's saying, okay, well, you want us to not develop all of our you know, wealth that we've discovered when it comes to fossil fuels, but you're also not putting uh in play any type of financing that would incentivize us to do that and to move in a different direction.
So so how are we gonna how are we going to do that?
There was there was a big push to uh, you know, crack down on coal uh and to insist that any new coal plants not add you know, any carbon emissions that they be, that they use some type of carbon tech to uh that that tech is not developed sufficiently. Indian, China and others were able to push back on that, and so it's nice they're saying some decent things. It's
better than it could have been. But We're already at like one point two degrees increase, so I'll get stay below one point five looks basically impossible.
There's an interesting line in a Bloomberg article in this where they actually go back to the Glasgow conference two years ago and say, after a pledge to phase down cold Glasgow two years ago, consumption has continued to rise and the world remains very likely to unlikely to limit warming to the Paris Agreement's target of one point five.
So yeah, like they talked about this two years ago, and cold consumption continues to rise, and that's sort of a good, I think, window into how this stuff actually goes. It's kind of already being dubbed the quote UAE consensus. And this is another line from the Bloomberg piece. They say, well, the outcome falls short of the specific fossil fueld quote phase out. As Ryan mentioned that most countries wanted, it
does break new ground. No previous COP text has mentioned moving away from oil and gas, the fuels that have underpinned the global economy for decades. I was listening to an NPR report on this yesterday when I was driving, and while I was driving a gas guzzling vehicle and
they said something. They were talking about how countries, largely in the Global South you just mentioned in Nigeria, we're really unhappy with the agreement so far because they are facing sort of more acute consequences quickly, more quickly than countries sort of in the middle are on the geographic middle, that is to say, are when it comes to climate that these are going to hurt poorer countries in the Global South more and more quickly than they are countries
in the middle. What's interesting about that is actually those countries also Nigeria being one example, for the reasons you just listed, Ryan, are the ones that will lose from some of the modernization and humanitarian benefits that fossil fuels brought to different parts of the world really quickly. And we're starting to see that become part of the debate
in the EU and the United States. That's like, listen, if you want these countries to have a robust and growing middle class, limiting fossil fuel consumption or limiting the profits that they can make on other people's fossil fuel consumption is saying we got rich off of these fossil fuels, but you can't, and that is a real problem I think for the left to sort of explain and work around this deal itself was.
Which would you say, well, fine, let's redistribute a lot of wealth.
See that Ryan has the easy, honest answer that John Kerry and al Gore don't. They won't go as so far as to say this this was.
Reportedly alight because he's kind of out of power.
I guess, yeah, at this point you probably John Kerry would not. But that is a real problem I think for the people who are flying to these conferences in private jets and living luxurious lifestyles to say, we got rech off this stuff. I'm sure the Heinz fortune came in no small part due to fossil fuel consumption and use of fossil fuels and shipping that's all over the all over the world, actually shipping that delicious ketchup all.
Over the world, all fifty cent varieties.
But no, you guys in Nigeria, that's where we're stopping this.
And so al Gore.
I'll read some of his follow up statement after they reached a deal. By the way, al Gore is seventy five years old, six years younger than Joe Biden.
He says.
The decision at COP twenty eight to finally recognize this is after the agreement was reached, To finally recognize that the climate crisis is at its heart a fossil fuel crisis is an important milestone, but it is also the bare minimum we need and is long overdue. The influence of petro states is still evident in the half measures
and loopholes included in the final agreement. Whether this is a turning point that truly marks the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era depends on the actions that come next and the mobilization of finance required to achieve them.
And that is a key point, is that the states.
States are going to have to insert themselves into the financial markets to drive financial decision, like they did with the Inflation Reduction Act for instance, saying like, look, if you invest in this clean tech, it's going to be more profitable because we're going to give these x subsidies and tax breaks like That's as basically the question that the world is facing.
Do we want to use state power to drive finance in that direction.
Right and then or do we use things like COP as a as a cope or as like a shield to say, listen, we came to the negotiating table. Reportedly, this deal was helped enormously by negotiations that John Kerry was having with China. So do we say on the surface, you know, this is what we're doing, and privately, we're going to continue taking our private jets and investing in fossil fuel companies and allowing fossil fuel companies to run ads on how they are transitioning to green energy while
they're still making bank on fossil fuels. And it's all just kind of a show that protects you know, that gives a little, as Al Gore says, quote bare minimum, sort of gives. It gives a little in order to continue doing other things beneath the surface.
The other big news here in Washington is that mass surveillance is getting a second look. This a coalition of the Progressive Caucus and the Freedom Caucus have been battling to reform what they call seven oh two authorities. This is the kind of key provisions of the Patriot Act that allow the US government to surveil foreigners and through the through their surveillance of foreigners, to kind of do back door searches with regard to like Americans either abroad
or uh or or on American soil. A lot of dispute and an argument about you know how how often it's abused, you know, what the back doors like allow for. And so this is an opportunity to say, okay, let's let's codify this, let's seriously reform this. On top of the kind of developing the developed industry that where private companies, you know, obtain all sorts of information that it would
be illegal for the US government to obtain. There is a law that says the US government cannot use a private you cannot buy privately what it couldn't obtain legally, you know, through a warrant. What they've done is they've gone to like third party brokers yes, and said, oh, well, we're not buying it directly from then, we're buying it from these guys that you know. Pathetically, the courts have been like, yeah, sure, that seems fine.
It's like what you no, what are we idiots? That's not fine.
So so this new push would also make very clear that you that you cannot do that. And so, as our resident Freedom Caucus correspondent, what's your sense of you know how serious the opposition is, and then we can get to kind of the where you know, where this is, where this is heading today, tomorrow and throughout the week.
You know, I wouldn't even look to the freedom focus on this. I would look to Senator Lee because he has been all over this, not just in the last couple of months, but for a long time. Because this is so FISA's Section seven oh two is expiring on December thirty first, and that has the intelligence community scared out of their minds because they rely so much on this oversight. They have abused it tens of thousands of times according to Inspector General reports. So that's according to
our own government. It has been abused rampantly. And basically whenever Chris Ray goes in front of Mike Lee and goes in front of the Senate or goes in front of the House, he says, just trust us. We have put reforms in place and it is not currently being abused. But of course we have absolutely no insight into that. You really just have to take Chris Ray's word for it, or you have to have you know, ongoing ig oversight. And what's interesting about FISA is that it came out
of the Church Committee era. And we've talked about this many times, Ryan FISA abuse. It's the abuse of the system that was meant to stop abuse at the system. And so it shows how easily even the intelligence community's sort of self government and it's it's oversight bodies can be abused because the intelligence community is able to operate, it gets so much sort of leeway to operate in the shadows. And so then you really do have to just say, hey, Christopher Ray, I'm trusting that you are
better than Jay Edgar Hoover. I even though you work in the JEdgar Hoover building, although not for not for long, but we're just trusting that you're doing this and you're doing it all on the up and up. And so Mike Lee has been just reaming them out publicly, and so to have that on the Senate side, Rand Paul is also on top of this on the Senate side, and to have them the Freedom Caucus with the negotiating
power that it does. You know, the sort of GOP on the House side at large doesn't have much negotiating power, but the Freedom Caucus does have a lot of negotiating power over the GOP because of the slim margins. They have decided to take this up as a cause, and rightfully so, because we can put the next element up
on the screen. This is an article from my colleague over at the Federalist Tristan Justice, who actually went and looked at a letter that some of the folks in the intelligence community released recently, where they said, as you well know, our nation is under significant threat today, with wars in Europe in the Middle East, a potential conflict with China and the Indo Pacific, and the deadly flow
of fentanyl across the southern border. It is so insulting that they just invoked fentanyl to keep spying on people. They add, in these circumstances, we cannot hamstring the intelligence community, either by failing through a new section seven oh two of the Faiza Act or by limiting it in ways that would make it difficult for the government to protect Americans. People like Mike Lee want them to get a warrant every time that they invade our privacy, which is basically
exactly what the Constitution says they have to do. They say they cannot afford to get warrants because that would impede their ability to keep Americans safe. That letter was signed, As Glenn Greenwald surmised on Twitter, he was like, this is you know, there's overlap between this letter and the Hunter Biden laptop is disinformation. It must be censored letter. Indeed it was, and that's what the federalsto article pointed out, and also pointed out that seven oh two was abuse.
This is where the Freedom Caucus is coming from. Was abused in a surveilling Carter Page and the sort of Russia collusion hoax.
And it's funny how we each try to reach our respective audiences because over the intercept and we could probably put this up and post our our headline was Trump allies, we are, you know, gunning for more surveillance authority. Because if you're going to reach kind of Norman Democrats want to, you want to make it clear to them, hey, okay, maybe we don't think you should, but maybe you trust Joe Biden or Barack Obama with these authorities.
Do you really trust Trump with these authorities?
And so, while it is very much the case that a lot of Trump allies are because of their experience with crossfire, Hurricane and Carter Page, uh and the flies at Court are very hostile to some of these authorities. That's why the freedom caucuses there are also some because he had plenty of deep staters in his administration who
were heavily supportive of them. So you've got Mike, Mike Pompeo, William Barr, John Ratcliffe, Robert O'Brien, Devin Nunas, all of them kind of championing given and giving Biden these reauthorization of these authorities that our headline Trump allies are giddy about House Intelligence Committee Surveillance bill.
Uh.
The opponents of it were able to kick that Intelligence Committee bill out of the NDAA.
And so here's how the process is unfolding.
That the National Defense Authorization Act is this must pass piece of legislation which is supposed to go through the House, the Senate, in the House this this week and in the Senate, Ram Paul Mike Lee, as Emily was talking about, are are going to make some the word out of the center, are going to make some kind of play today to try to reform you know what's what's getting rammed through there. That's going to be one line of defense.
Assuming that that eventually gets overridden. It comes over to the House, which is going to try to pass the legislation under what's called suspension of the rules. And in order to suspend the rules, you need a two thirds vote, which means that you only need one hundred and forty six members of Congress to stop the NDAA with this extension of spying authority in it. One hundred and forty
six members Republicans and Democrats. You've got Primila Jaia Paul organizing on on the left, organizing the Progressive Caucus against it, and you've got warrened was it Davison and Oc'donald da Davis so Ohio really kind of a popular Republican, soft spoken but kind of just absolutely has been losing it
on the Intel Committee lately. Did you see this that he was like, you're effing lying to me, Like yeah, And you know, Warren is known by his colleagues as just as a good dude basically like and doesn't get his feathers ruffled. And so the fact that he's has been screaming at Mike Turner behind closed doors, it seems to be the thing that blocked what was going to be. If we want to get even deeper into the weeds on this, they were going to do a thing called Queen Queen of the Hill.
Remember this, So they.
Were going to put both things up, like, all right, here's what the intelligence community wants, here's what the reformers, Jaya, Paul, what Warren and Permila say that they want, and whichever gets more votes on the floor is the Queen of the Hill and then gets put in there.
But they were getting lied on so horrendously.
Yeah that Warren was like, no, like this is outrageous, We're not doing this, and so and worked with the Freedom Caucus members on the Rules Committee, which if anybody says, all right, what are the what are the actual wins that they've gotten from that speaker fight? Getting the members on the Rules Committee at least puts them in a
position to have more leverage here. So if they can cobble together one hundred and forty six members of Congress to oppose the NBA with this kind of reauthorization in it a huge challenge because there's there's no greater pressure put on members of Congress than to just approve this military policy.
To do nothing, just get it's done, move it through.
This is status quo.
But if they if they can stop it, then they have to negotiate, because then they have to go back through the Rules Committee to get it onto the floor. And on the Rules committee you've got the Freedom Caucus members who are going to say, well, just reauthorize it using our bill that includes some very basic reforms. And you can tell how shady the intel community is about this. All of the kind of authorizations for this spying expire by think April eleventh, and this bill extends them through
April nineteenth. And then what they can do is after April eleventh, when they expire, as long as the law is still in place, they could.
Extend them for another year.
Yes, yeah, so okay, it expires in April nineteenth, but they will then on April twelfth, like extend them all the way to April twenty twenty five. And so one of the things that Warren and Promila are fighting for is say no, you can't do that, right like you have to we at least have to have this fight again in the spring.
There was a sunset that happened at one point during the Trump administration, and they have all kinds of mechanisms to continue justifying seven oh two authority. And that's what Davidson and Jipaul understand and realize. And that's why when they're crafting the text of this legislation, they're being very
careful about it. And that's why you've seen the intelligence community come out with a letter like the one that we mentioned, because they're actually terrified that they're about to lose a major power and they're just asking for the benefit of the doubt. Now, Mike Lee tweeted last night, Tomorrow, the Senate, so that's today, has the chance to remove FISA seven oh two from the NDAA. The Senate rules
can make this happen. And if just forty one senators agree, Lee ad advices should be reviewed on its own merits, not the NDAA. Not the NDAA is and that's actually really important. Rand Paul has a rule twenty eight point of order tomorrow and if those forty one senators oppose that, so tomorrow, by the way, is today, and Mike Lee refers to them as quote the firm, which is pretty funny. If they oppose that motion seven oh two is out
of the NDAA. The firm, Lee continues, will try to scare senators, warning of inevitable catastrophe if seven oh two expires. At midnight on New Year's Eve, and.
So once it's crazy, it's not a catastrophe because I mean I think it's a catastrophecause it's a bad policy. But from their preserved it's not a catastrophe because it's good for a year, like even if it expires, you still have the authority.
So they're kind of lying to people.
Yes, although if there is proactive legislation that passes, like the Davidson di Paul negotiations, then they're actually really in serious trouble. And one thing to watch out for is just because there's a vote on this now on December thirteenth, whatever it is, that doesn't mean that they don't find
a way. When things get really harried at the very end of these NDAA negotiations, it somehow ends up back in the bill that it somehow gets out of the bill because they are doing carrots and sticks from now until the end of the year. Although the government could
shut down, that's a big question. Does the Freedom Caucus decide to shut down the government over seven oh two huge question, and they would probably say it's also would be about Ukraine, It would be about a lot of stuff in the funding bills that need to get passed in the next couple of weeks in order to avoid a government shut down. But to seven oh two become
part of it. If you follow surveillance and privacy issues, seven oh two is like the krem delocreme of surveillance malfeasans like, this is the apex of American surveillance problems. And you know, is it the worst of the worst. I mean, it's all bad, there's no question about it. But it's it's been around forever, well not forever, but as long as some of these really egregious encroachments have existed,
high tech encroachments have existed. So they're very scared and they should be very scared because there's a lot of will right now to get rid of this, and it's happening fast.
And to sum up, here's news you can use.
If you love spying authority and you trust your government, call Congress, tell them.
To approve the NDAA no changes.
Get that spying authority over to the spy masters.
If you're skeptical of.
The government and you want to and you're skeptical of spying authority, call your member of Congress and tell them to vote no on the NDAA and force a negotiation over reforms of the spying authority's that's basically what it is.
If you love spy masters, vote yes on the NDA.
If you don't love the spy masters, you vote no on the NDAA. And there's one hundred and forty six o's, then they're back to the table.
And remember what they're asking basically is just for the benefit of the doubt, and that's.
What intelligence is. Just give them one more year.
The intelligence community relies, it runs on. It is fueled by benefit of the doubt. Because it operates so undemocratically. It is inherently an anti democratic institution. And that's what they operate on. And congressional oversight, I don't know, like good luck, good luck overseeing their day to day, their day to day abuses of the constitution. You can't possibly
do it. You just have to trust them. And have they in the last ten years after fomenting two major lies let's just talk about Trump and Russia collusion, and then telling you on the eve of an election that an important piece of information was Russian propaganda, when we now know that they knew that that wasn't true. Have they earned the benefit of the doubt over the last decade.
Obviously not. And we can go back even more to the Iraq War and imperialism in the Middle East, adventurism in the Middle East, and all of the malfeasins they were up to in the aughts and say, did they earn your trust? No, of course they didn't. And so yeah, if you believe that we should trust them, go ahead, call them up and tell them. Yeah. Past the NDAA Ryan. One other thing to keep in mind, I think is interesting.
About a month ago, I was poking around on this and what I was hearing is that they're just not there might not be time to deal with seven oh two because even by people who wanted to, because the schedule is so crowded. And the fact that Lee and Rand Paul, Warren Davidson and Jaia Paul have really made this an issue, I think speaks to what they've been hearing from constituents.
Yeah, so keep that in mind. There you go.
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