4/2/24: Israel Strikes Top Iranian General, WCK Aid Workers Killed In Gaza, Trump Peace Calls Trigger Israel, Gen Z Goes Blue Collar, 60 Minutes Havana Syndrome, Richard Dawkins Islam Debate, Israel Destroys Al Shifa Hospital, Activist Confronts Congressman In Viral Hallway Vids

Gaza Strip. One of the individuals who was killed is actually an American citizen, So break that down for you as well. We've got some Trump updates for you. He took a billion dollar hit to his net worth yesterday as a result of true social stock really suffering a bad blow, so we'll talk about that. We also have a really interesting report from the Wall Street Journal that we wanted to discuss gen Z increasingly choosing blue collar work. So what could that mean for the future. It is

actually really fascinating to look at these numbers. Sixty Minutes dropped a supposed expose on Havana syndrome, so Soccer and I both took a.

two week raid, a massacre has been revealed. So I'm going to take you through everything we know about what happened there. And we have a fantastic guest in the show today. I'm really excited for you guys to get to see he has been every day on Capitol Hill stalking members of Congress, just trying to get basic answers from them. Some of his exchanges have gone viral. You may have seen a few, So we'll talk to him

about what he's been up to there. But before we get into any of that, just want to thank all of you so much for your support.

to know. You'll have the immediate upgrade, and we will communicate everything, including the big news to you first before it goes out to anybody else. So if you can take advantage and you can help us out, we would really appreciate it. We have some major plans for the election season that's coming at.

So this is extraordinarily significant, not only because who was taken out, and you can see the images on the screen there of that complex, you know, apparently smoke, smoldering and on fire. It's not only significant because of who was taken out, but also because of where this occurred. Let's put this map up on the screen so you all can see the Iranian embassy and this building that was part of the Iranian embassy. I mean, this is sandwiched right in between the embassy of Canada and the

actual full embassy building of Iran. This is right in the center of Damascus, as you could see from these videos. I don't think I could possibly describe to you how extraordinary and how much of an outrageous breach of international law.

own use of that. We know that it's being done to us. That's why the embassies here in Washington are all heavily surveils. Ours are heavily surveiled across the world. One of the reasons that we don't generally attack them, even whenever people who are highly unseemly, including people who we would like to kill who are inside of them, is specifically to not breach the Vienna Convention and then invite similar attacks on our own diplomats and or spies

all across the world. So that's a little bit of the background. Can we go and put the next element please up on the screen, because this is very important. What the Iranians say is that the strike on its compound killed two separate generals and that the envoy to Syria quote vows decisive response in their attack. Now, what's been frankly not discussed enough in this is that this is the continuation of the last couple of days of

a major ramp up by Israel inside of Syria. And we can put that next one up there please on the screen. What this tells us is that the Israelis actually struck previously just days ago in Syria, killing quote dozens of militants, including Syrian soldiers and Hesbola militants. This explicitly, let's again repeat, has nothing to do with the current war on Gaza and instead was an expansion against Hezbolah

militants and including the killing of Syrian soldiers. So let's just repeat here again that we have an attack both here on in Iranian IRGC general who was the major top general of the Iyatolas kind of personal revolutionary guard corps. We have the deaths of Syrian soldiers and we have the deaths of Hesbela militants. These are three very important constituencies that are in the region there's also Crystal. There is reports that are currently filtering out of an all

ton of base in Syria. This is where the United States has several US service members who are stationed there who are special operators supposedly going against Isis. Anyway, these will recall that that mission and some of these bases have been previously attacked several weeks ago. We are now getting reports just as of this morning, that the US occupation that the US base in Altanov is now being

attacked with suicide drones, very likely from the IRGC. So what the terrifying part of that is that it's not Israel these soldiers who are forward deployed in Iraq, Syria, Jordan and elsewhere. It is American soldiers who are now appearing to be attacked by these suicide drones after what appeared to be at least some sort of quasi ceasefire after a retaliatory strike on the IRGC previously.

war zone. And while we talk a lot here, of course about Israel's action, the truth of the matter is people throughout the region see us as just as complicit as they should. I mean, what did we talk about yesterday, How we continue to ship these two thousand pounds bunker buster bombs even as we go out and pretend to handring our concern.

put us in an insane, outrageous, indefensible position. And a strike like this, God knows what the fallout is going to be. There are dire warnings coming from the Iranians. There was a statement released saying this attack will have our fierce response. There of course talking about how this is a violation of international law. And that's the other piece of this is there seems to be an intentional pattern of seeing what the Israelis can get away with.

They have violated effectively every humanitarian international law, norm, guideline, whatever you want to call them.

this out. Let's say even the Iranians don't get involved here, a war between Syria and Israel would be a disaster for us. We have thousands of troops who are nominally in Syria, also on the border there with Jordan, as we lost three already in this conflict. An explosion there would almost certainly draw in the tens of thousands of Hezbola militants that are currently inside of Syria, and then we could be a full blown conflagration. And that's exactly

how you get Iran drawn into the conflict. This is also an upping of the ante, and this is kind of what we've been seeing as strike, a breach of the Vienna Convention in towntown Damascus. This doesn't just happen, you know, as we've just demonstrated, there had dozens of Syrians that were killed, militants and others that were just a couple of days ago. The Israelis have been wanton links striking and blowing up whoever they want inside of

Syria basically for the last seven years. They learned that strategy from Us. And part of the problem is that when you erase any of these norms around war and about treating Syria as a sovereign state, we get to this point where people can just feel as if they can do what they want. I mean, this isn't Hamas, this isn't even technically a non state act. This is full blown sovereign nations with the capacity to destroy tens of millions. And that is where, you know, the gamble

is really honestly terrifying. And that's what we see here with Biden. I haven't even seen, you know, some sort of reaction here from the Biden administration. And instead what we're basically doing is shipping them the weapons and selling them the planes that they are then carrying out such strikes with. Okay, but then should we not have some say, you know how these things are done and are used my only humble suggestion. But apparently that's too much.

got and put this up on the screen. So as I alluded to before, we now know that seven aid workers for Jose Andre's organization called World Central Kitchen were killed. The Israeli military bombed three cars that belonged to these foreign nationals. We now know that one of the individuals who was killed is a dual American Canadian citizen, but a number of other foreign nationals involved here, as well

as as one Palestinian. Jose Andres himself put on a statement saying, today World Central Kitchen lost several of our sisters and brothers in an IDF airstrike in Gaza. I'm heartbroken, greeming for their families and friends and our whole WCK family. These are people angels I served alongside in Ukraine, Gaza, Turkey, Morocco, Bahamas, Indonesia. They are not faceless, they are not nameless. The Israeli

government needs to stop this indiscriminate of killing. It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, Stop using food as a weapon.

children and babies are literally to death. You have anarchy breaking out because of the desperate circumstances, especially in northern Gaza, and now amidst that backdrop, you have seven aid workers who there specifically to try to feed hungry people who are targeted and killed by the IDF. Sober I know they're expressing their quote unquote sorrow over the incident, claiming they're going to investigate it. But let's be really clear here.

These aid workers were in a deconflicted zone. They had done everything followed standard protocol to make sure they were not targeted, that they would be safe while they were conducting aid activities trying to feed starving people, and they were targeted and killed anyway in a marked car.

It's the exact tailtale sign of a precision guided munition that's been going through is fired easily by a drone in some cases, actually, there's been seen some speculation by munitions and military experts it may have even been the

tailtale the bladed hell fire missile. I know that that's one that the US has used in the past because it's one that can carry directly through a car and create the whole just exactly like what you see, which kills everybody inside but limits the amount of collateral damage then on the outside. So then there's a question of

where do they get such munition? Why are we using this on an AID convoy and presumably you know, given the fact that the top of the car literally has the picture of food that's on top of it clearly branded with the name, then why was it targeted in the first place? And I mean, I think it does also tell you a lot that these Reelis themselves have basically givered no explanation as to how something like this

can happen. They just say it's an unintended strike and that they express their condolences for the dead.

difficult regions around the world. They had been quite bold in their approach and cowardedly pretty effective. So this is the worst thing that could possibly happen in terms of starving Palestinians. Yet another aid organization cut off at the knees, just like Anra has been as well. So the consequences here are incredibly dire, and it's so it is so indescribable, the number of atrocities that have been committed day after day.

And you just look at this and you say, well, how are they so brazen killing an American aid worker, potentially dragging us.

this went down. But the thing is, Chrystal, we know they won't do that because that would expose the same level of anger and internal I mean, at a certain point we already know in terms of the indiscriminate, the lack of tactics you've covered it to in the past, the AI use in some cases, the way that people

are just killed Willy Neil. That's another interesting question. Did human even make a decision here or do they just program something in here and says if it's a moving car in X, Y and z area, just blow the shit out of that's right, and you know that, and if so, you better answer a lot of questions as to why I don't feel in any way confident that our consulor you know, officials or state department will in any way do something like that. It takes me really upset.

know exactly where this is ultimately going to go. And you know, the Israeli military, the IDF. They're famously very technically advanced, right, they have all the technology in the world, and yet we have consistently seen AID workers, medical workers, ambulances.

The little girl who was trapped in a car with her dead family members begging for help, the Red Crescent sends out medics in an ambulance deconflicted with the Israelis in an attempt to save her, and everyone involved targeted and killed.

So the fact that this aid organization has now had to pause their operations and are no longer feeding the people of Gaza who are starving to death is a devastating, devastating Below, let's move on to some additional risks for our service members that are President Joe Biden is willingly putting them into. Let's put this up on the screen, Soccer. You found this, I mean, this is it's obvious in a way by the Washington posts. You made a good

job writing up here. Biden's plan for Gaza Peer endangers US troops, experts warn Skeptics fear the humanitarian operation will be an enticing target for Hamas or other militants. They write in this piece, the Biden administration's plan to install a floating peer as part of the broad international initiative feed starving Palas names will endanger the US service members who must build, operate, and defend the structure from attack. According to military experts, they say there is a risk

of enormous political consequences for the president. I love how the political consequences for the president our top of mind here versus the lives of the service members who are being put at risk. The Americans fixed proximity to the fighting and the intense anger at the US for support of Israel will render the peer an enticing target for Hamas or another militant group, many of whom receive arms military guidance from Iran. Skeptics of the operation worn rocket fire,

attack druns and divers, are boats hauling explosives. All will pose a threat. Paul Kennedy, who's a retired Marine Corps general who led major humanitarian operations after natural disasters into Paul in the Philippines, said, quote, if a bomb went off in that location, the American public will ask what the hell were they doing there in the first place, which seems like something that the American people are frankly already asking.

edd of the Mediterranean Sea to a beachhead. All deliveries will then be staged and inspected in Cyprus before being loaded onto vessels that carry them to the pier. US personnel will have to move supplies to that causeway. They say then that officials will not leave it. Now here's where it gets even crazier is that the Israel government has said that is really forces will only ensure that

aid reaches those that it should. Now they're taking over, So who exactly is this aid, you know, being turned over to? The other question here about troops and being top of mind is they list the evacuation of Afghanistan and the Bay Route bombings from nineteen eighty three as to consequences of what it looks like whenever you just have troops in a very uncertain environment. And that really what makes me nervous about this, and I think rightfully so is a way these are only a thousand, you know,

source of sailors. Let's not forget you know, incidents like Beyrout, like the USS coal bombing in two thousand. All it took was a pittily little speedboat and they killed a lot of American sailors and they blew, you know, some two hundred million dollar ship a massive hole in the middle of the side of it. So it just highlights the immense danger that these guys are in. I mean, not to mention it's in the middle of a freaking

war zone. The Israelis just bombed AID workers. How do we know that our troops and personnel won't come into content? How do we know that a hamas rocket's not going to missfire or intentionally be fired at them, and it just takes one and then what do we know, We're all in the middle of something else. Again, not to mention even accidents. I mean, remember in the Obama administration when the Navy speedboat what was it like, drifted into

Iranian waters and it was a hostage crisis. These are all things that we need to avoid absolute you know that we should not even consider putting our people in harms way, and instead we're actually sending more people into harms way, specifically to protect Israel's reputation. I guess which is what's even more ridiculous.

whole pure idea has always been preposterous. By the way, after it was announced in Biden's State of the Union, like it was some great humanitarian gesture that he came up with, it later was revealed through reporting that actually Netanyahu was the one who suggested it.

aid into the Gaza Strip is insane. All we need to do is actually pressure Israel to let in the aid that is sitting amassed at the border, but we won't do that. Instead, we would rather put our service members at risk on some nonsense boondoggle that's going to

take months to even come into effect anyway. And then, by the way, every time the Panagamon of the State Department gets asked about hey, you know, okay, so once this peer is built, what is even your plan for a distribution because you have effectively anarchy at least.

had this policy of striking the Thies. Hasn't slowed them down, haven't changed the dynamics, not that they even expected that it would. But this remains another potential point of escalation. So a dangerous and horrifying situation all the way around.

for my entire professional life. So makes sense that this is exactly where we end up, even though I would contend the super majority of the American public has learned our lessons from our adventures in that region, and yet you know, Washington, Israel, everybody else can't just keep dragging us into it.

insistence on freeing Israeli hostages. First, we're another departure from conservative support for net and Yahoo. So they right here. Two Israeli journalists traveled to Palm Beach, Florida a little over a week ago, hoping to elicit from Donald J. Trump a powerful expression of support for their country's war in Gaza. Instead, one of them wrote that what they heard from mister Trump at mar A Lago quote shocked us to the core. Both US presidential cannie Biden and

Trump are turning their rhetorical backs on Israel. This is so delusional by the way, on every level, both about Biden and about Trump. But anyway, concluded Ariel Kahana, right wing settler who is the senior diplomatic correspondent for Israel Higham the newspapers owned by the billionaire Republican donor at

Miriam Maddilson. Miss Addilson has arranged the interview with mister Trump personally, Accordingyshaw, person with direct knowledge of the planning, and just as a little reminder of a bit of what he said in that interview, let's go ahead and listen to Donald Trump.

for Israel. And for everybody else here they say, if I ran for if I ran for office in Israel, I get ninety eight percent of the vote. I'm not Jewish, and yet Israel to me is very important.

here in Washington, DC. Anyway, here's what he says, quote, the only difference between Trump and Biden, and I say this as somebody who is not a supporter of Biden, is that Biden has put his money where his mouth is. He's been sending arms. Mister Pudhert said so that he seems to suggest, operationally, the problem with Biden is rhetoric and not policy. Trump is rhetoric and he's not laying

out any policy that should make anybody feel good. And now I found that very noteworthy because as you can see there, the actual diehards for Israel are very much appreciative of Joe Biden. They are annoyed that he won't rhetorically back him, but they're like, hey, he's been sending in the arms. That's what we actually want the weapons. Trump is a genuine wildcard. You have no idea. And the irony is is that Trump doesn't care. He doesn't

care about anything. And in fact what comes through is that he has quote never forgiven Benjamin Nettunnahoo for congratulating Joe Biden as the winner of the twenty twenty election, and it may Hey, listen, take what you can get right with Trump. That may be the one thing that

will undercut his previous love affair with Netauna Who. For example, in twenty twenty one, mister Trump told Axios journalist Brock Ravid he concluded Nettuna Who never wanted peace with the Palestinians, and his first reaction after October seventh was to criticize

Bibie and the intelligence services. His advisors then privately pleaded with him to clean up his comments, and then he eventually turned to standard lines of support before returning to the ambiguity of you gotta wrap this thing up now as much as possible. I mean, look, I've always put some at least some faith in Trump's complete indifference on these issues, because with Trump it's better rather than by Biden. Is ideological in some way, sometimes good Afghanistan, sometimes horrible,

like in Many, Ukraine, for example, Israel. With Trump, he'll just go where over the wind blows. And what struck out to me was with Trump throughout the whole thing, he's like, it's becoming a real problem. You know, you look all over the world, people are really starting to abandon you. You got to wrap things up. He's like an outside observer and with that, now we don't know what policy will happen, you know, if he were to assume

the presidency. But at the very least he is a genius in one respect, which is public relations and with how things are shifting politically and where to stake out a position. And that's why it was extraordinary to hear him say like, oh, you got to wrap it up as soon as possible.

calls today in Samaria. And they asked Trump about it, and he basically indicated he was open to it. I mean, that's the thing, is you're right that he he doesn't have the same ideological, fervent commitment to Israel that Joe

Biden clearly does. He is a purely transactional character. However, always up to this point in the modern you know, in the past thirty years or whatever, that transactional math always, especially on the Republican side, at this point, adds up to fervent, unconditional support of whatever the hell Israel wants to do. Because remember, the actually the strongest, most lockstep diehard supporters not just of Israel, but of Nan Yahoo and Moriss and Ben Giveren, whatever insanity and psychosis they

want to unleash, is not actually Jewish Americans. It's the white evangelical Christians who make up the most important part and the most fervent supporters of Donald Trump. You also have, you know, part of why last time around he was so pro Israel. It is not just because of Kushner, but because of the close relationship and the money that came from Sheldon Addelson. So it's not clear to me that any of that fundamental transactional math has really shifted

from him. So I can't have any like hope or expectation that the fact that he made these like sort of vague comments saying you got to wrap it up, which can also be construed as you need to sort of like, you know, the guy who said you need to knew Gaza and finish it off the Republican congressman. I mean, Trump obviously didn't say that, but that finished the job. Rhetoric is similar to what that Congresszan cleaned

up his nuke Gaza comments to mean. So anyway, I think the freak ount over where Trump would be from the Israeli perspective and from the right wing we got to support Israel no matter what perspective is misplaced. Although I do acknowledge that he does not have the ideological furquency around this issue that certainly Joe Biden does.

the multi billionaire Las Vegas Las Vegas stands. I mean, he is the funder of birthright, probably single handedly responsible for a huge portion of the GOP electorate's actual positioning on Israel. For him to still say that to a Miriam Adelson interviewee is actually pretty crazy. Now, you know, you could take whatever you want from that. You have no idea which way it will go. But noteworthy to me nonetheless, that at least in Israel they were like,

oh wow, like at least he is really right. They're starting to understand that things are a little bit different.

handbringing recriminations that are coming from the Biden administration with the expectation that he's going to have Trump his buddy to deal with next time around. And so this at least scrambles that calculus a little bit, and that way is a positive thing.

the Trump Media and Technology Group stock price. You know, this is over a long period of time when it was the Spack and whatever. So we can see in the recent era there at the end of this chart, you know.

traditional IPO. I was reading a little bit in the business press, but the filing at the end of the day shocked all of Wall Street, not just because of the where the price was, because it showed that the company generated Crystal just seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in revenue in just the fourth quarter of last year. I mean,

I think people need to understand this too. Fourth quarter, especially if you're doing advertising, that's that's like the best time because that's when a huge portion of ad spend is actually recorded and is actually deployed because that's when all of us are shopping for Christmas presents or Black Friday. I mean, it's usually it's like for us, for example here on YouTube, that's when we're going to make the most amount of money because that is when our ad

rates you're not going to go up. And then Q one January through March is usually the worst time because that's like the lowest ad spend period, so for them to bring in just some three quarters of a million dollars in revenue is honestly stunning, you know, given like it's like, how are you even signing up any clients? And then then you give their top line figures and then you have to wonder about what that growth is and about the burn rate for some sixty million dollars.

That's another question I have. I'm like, what the hell are you even spending sixty million dollars on?

a serious business model for a moment. We were always skeptical of these like Twitter alternatives back when you know, Trump was kicked off of Twitter, and before it was in the Elon Musk era and whatever.

to it. But now that you have the elon Twitter era and it's much more of a sympathetic place to conservatives and it's you know, sort of coded right wing. Now, whether the reality of that is true or not, the business case really doesn't make any sense. I mean, at this point, true Social is just relevant only because Trump is on it, and I can't say that I have

personally spent a lot of time on truth Social. But apparently because there's no liberals there to like, you know, to sneer at and mock, it's also kind of destructive to the conservative movement because it's just them arguing with each other and like tearing each.

thousand dollars in revenue last quarter. But it's also like, who is even advertising on this platform at all? And what yeah, what business would say, Oh, the place I really want to be is true Social. It's going to be definitionally, it's going to be very niche organizations who are really just trying to target this specific ideological group. And you know, I was trying to look up how

many daily active users True Social has. That information's not out there, but it obviously is dwarfed by other, you know, mainstream social media platforms. So in any case, I think it was only a matter of time before there was a significant cratch, and I would expect that there's more to come. And again it is one more illustration of just how incredibly fake our economy is. Because I do this, even after the crash, it still has like a six point six billion dollars valuation.

Don't know what it is under Elon. According to Elon, it's actually up, so you know. Anyway, So we're talking at two to three hundred times, And just so everybody knows, trude social is what worth six billion. Fidelity has marked down their investment in Elon's Twitter by some seventy percent. So let's do the math here. Let's doo point three times.

What did Elon pay for a forty four billion, so their fidelity is valuing Twitter under Elon around thirteen billion, so there's no way yeah double, So it's like that actually sounds reasonable to me, thirteen billion dollars for the current Twitter, but yeah, six billion is wildly outrageous.

becoming the tool belt generation. More young workers are going into trades at disenchantment with the college treck continues, rising pay, and new technologies shine up plumbing and electrical jobs. Let's actually go to the next part because this is a

really interesting chart that people can see. It shows that enrollment growth in four year college degree in vocational community focused community college has gone up by some fifteen percent from the twenty twenty one baseline, whereas there has been maybe a single digit increase if you look at other four year institutions and even community college that are not

vocational focus. What that tells us is that the spike, the overall fifteen or percent spike, is one of the most extraordinary that we've seen in modern American history for younger people who are explicitly choosing to go in to trades based educations with set wages that are much higher than they ever were before than at any time previously when they were choosing for more service based economies, we can go to the next one too, because this is

really really fascinating is you can watch there how the precipitous decline has happened in the average age of select trades electrician, heating, air conditioning, carpenter, and I think every trade except for welding has seen a precipitous drop just since twenty twenty, and especially since twenty seventeen in the median age of the people who are engaged in the trades. Crystal. And the main thing that comes through in this piece over and over again on top of the data is

that people believe a couple of things. Number one is that the wage premium for college is no longer worth it. That is absolutely one hundred percent true. But two, and even more interesting to me, young people are sitting there

eighteen years old. They're looking at AI. They're looking at the productivity gains that are being rolled up up into the stock prices these big tech companies, and they're saying, yeah, you know what, the one thing you can't AI is plumbing, welding, Having a job as an auto mechanic, having a job as an EV technician, having his job as an electrician. They're always going to need that, if anything, that's what's going to build the backbone of the future economy. And

they're choosing to make that choice. And I think they're setting themselves up for a much easier and previously trodden path to middle class and frankly to prosperity and not taking out a lot of debt. They're setting themselves up for very very well. They're going to start airning a lot more money than they would have previously. It's a very very sensible direction for a lot of people who are out there.

in the other direction there. There's also tremendous demand in some of these trades where there'd been previously a crisis of a lot of older journeymen who were retiring and there wasn't a clear pipeline of new young talent to replace them. Well, that is now reversing, and you pointed to the pay, So in this piece they point out that the median pay for new construction hires actually rose a five point one percent to forty eight thousand dollars

roughly last year. By contrast, new hires and professional services. So like your sort of traditional white collar job out of college earned an annual thirty nine thousand and experienced a two point seven percent, so a lower increase from twenty twenty two. This is according to ADP, so at least in terms of where you start out, you may start at a higher salary if you go into one of these trades versus if you go and spend all

the money on a four year college degree. Now, still over the lifetime of these different careers blue collar versus white collar, right now, the median for white collar work once you're into your career continues to outpace blue collar work.

But you know, does that remain the case? Is it worth it given the extraordinary expense that you have to incur on the front end, the fact that there's been a shift away from this idea that everyone has to go to college and if you're going to succeed in life, you have to go to college, and that's the only

path forward. I think it's a really positive thing because you know, there's also a lot of people who find tremendous fulfillment in the trades and like being able to build things and work with their hands and don't want to just sit in an office all day. So I think this is a really incredibly positive and hopeful development.

about trades is you can live wherever you want. You don't necessarily have to live in a city if you don't want to, and one hundred k a year in a smaller town where they need HVAC just as much as HVAC as we live here in Washington, DC. In some cases, your cost of living can be especially on housing can be like one fifth the amount in a major metropolitan area. You have a lot more flexibility. I see this all the time with people who are skilled,

especially like nurses. Nurses they can just decide to move whenever they want, and they're in demand literally everywhere for small town, big town they want to make more money, they can travel to. It's an incredible career field. I see this too with people who are electricians and plumbers. When you have such a valuable skill, you can effectively

transplant anywhere in the entire United States. You have more job security, and you also make it so they don't necessarily have to live in a major metropolitan area if you don't want to. It just gives you a ton

of optionality. And the other thing, and this is what I really hope for, is that the colleges finally have to compete, because if their revenues start to go down, they're going to have to start mark getting themselves as to why they are actually worth it, and not just so mom and dad can feel good that you went to a four year college degree. They actually got to be like, no, no, no, if you come here, we're going

to get you a job. So I actually invest some of that money that they're basically stealing from people and from the government into actually getting you a job on the other side, or maybe the lower their admissions rates, or maybe you know, we can change up our policy. That's probably the most fundamentally important thing, is a shake up to higher education.

How many people go and you know, they do the thing they're supposed to do, and they get their four year degree and then end up, you know, Barista's Starbucks, are working in a field or an industry where they don't even need a four year college degree, or they're certainly not working in mess I mean, perhaps a majority of people end up not even working in the thing that they studied in college.

be a luxury good. It should be something where, yes, you have to take out a tremendous amount of debt or you come from a family that can afford it, and then you can use that wage premium in the service based economy. But the vast majority of people don't need to attend. It's not a good trade. So twenty percent or so of people who attended exactly into that bucket. Now I'm not saying it's fair. I don't think it

is fair. But what I do think is that watching people go into hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, the average college what is the average student loan that's out there, something like twenty five something thirty thousand dollars, especially on these variable interest rates with some of these private loan programs is usury. I mean, it's insane, and thanks to our current president, by the way, you can't even discharge it through bankruptcy. So it makes it that

it's just an incredible news around people's neck. In this country right now, we have a huge problem where the average woman wants to have two point two kids and is having one point eight. The number one reason that families cite as to why is money and debt. Specifically,

a huge portion of this is student debt. The other issue is I just was talking about if you want to have a job and you want to work with your college degree, the likelihood is, like us, you need to move to a major metropolitan area which has a very high cost of living and is where the major concentration of these things are. And so over and over you're getting on the wheel where very few people are

actually winning. The people who won are the boomers in the past, and like I said, traditionally some twenty percent or so of the population, which does really justify that college premium highly concentrated in STEM in particular, for what is actually worth it. But we never thought about it as a trade. We just thought of it as an intrinsic good, and that's really how we ended up here.

than it is right now. And we take it for granted because of the era that we grew up in that it should be this incredible burdensome load, when not that long ago, the University of California system was free and many other schools were extremely affordable where you could work and actually afford to pay your way through school. Like the idea of being able to do that is preposterous now, So people even at state schools leave with tens of thousands of dollars in debt to start their life.

That has ripple effects throughout their entire life. As you're pointing out not only with family creation, also really stifles entrepreneurship because you know, you've got this thing you got to pay every month, and that's hanging over you, and so you just feel.

It has been now alleged for some five six odd years from the Cuban embassy in Havana, where it gets its name, where allegedly US workers embassy workers were being targeted with some new directed energy weapon and experiencing a

bizarre array of symptoms. This was then accepted as fact published by the media ascribed then even though it occurred supposedly in Havana to the Russian government and became a full on Russia Gate craze throughout the two thousands, to the extent that the United States Congress passed money to help them with their health bills. Where the US intelligence community at first was treating it as real, the media has an entire panic about whether US diplomats are being

attacked with this newfangled weapon. It was eventually killed and said that it was totally fake and by the US intelligence community itself. And yet sixty minutes has decided to resurrect Havana syndrome and say no even though the people who have every incentive to lie and say that it is real, even though they even say that it's not real, they are actually orchestrating a cover up. Here's what they had to say.

know very much about this man. What I do know is that if you just look, it's very basic in terms of the you know, the Midon, the Belling Cat connections and all that, with all the incentive in the world to play up some grand conspiracy and all of this just taking at the word, frankly, a bunch of diplomats and other people who could be suffering from any kinds of health maladies from for whatever reason, hypochondriacs and others who are just being totally believed with frankly no

skepticism by the media here and in parroting a crazy accusation, which is that somebody is firing a secret microwave energy weapon through the walls at your head to I mean, for what purpose, to immobilize you? And just keep coming back to why, for what reason, what purpose would this entire thing exists?

when it really really isn't. But to me, perhaps the most revealing part of the sixty minutes you know segment on this expose on this came at the very end where one of the primary people that they're relying on for this analysis, they mentioned in passing that now he's left the Pentagon and he wants to get government contracts to deal with Havana syndrome suffers, so he has a direct monetary incentive to you know, spin this story and

paint this picture, et cetera. One of the other key individuals that they interview as part of this is a lawyer who's representing a bunch of Havana syndrome quote unquote sufferers. So you also have, you know, a monetary and personal incentive to paint this picture, so you know, when you put the pieces together, of what they actually were able to produce here versus you know, what we know and what the government has even had to admit at this point.

And I don't think that they were excited to admit this, by the way, because they seem very gung ho about the whole syndrome situation. It doesn't really add up.

says that this is vake. They say that Havana syndrome was not caused by an energy weapon or a foreign adversary according to them, and the basic sixty minutes theory is that all of this is being covered up to avoid some sort of war with Russia or some sort

of accusation. Just think about this very clearly. Our government has every incentive in the world to whip up conspiracy theories about Russia to keep the American population against them so that we can continue to buy into their Ukraine funding hoax, which they are dramatically unpopular and underwater with. There's no reason that they would want to cover this up. If it was even two percent true, they would say it was true. Think about the other crap that they've

pushed on us, the Russian bounty story in Afghanistan. I mean, I can go on forever, but for some reason, this one in particular. Yeah, that one they're covering up. We're not even talking about debts, you know, we're talking about alleged attacks. Another very clear sign about who are the people who are very I guess rejoicing around this. Here you have John Bolton saying that it's real and that we need to get very serious about it. Let's take a listen.

I commend CBS for going after it. I think you should continue to go after it too, because the danger that the Russians or any adversary could actually perfect this kind of weapon, the damage it could do to our troops, to high level government officials in a time of crisis is very very concerning, and I just think people swept.

our premier television investigative review program for some reason. As long as it's Russia, then you know, we can roll it out there. We can even allege that the US government, which has cooked up the most insane Russian conspiracies of the last seven years, that they itself are in on some grand Russian conspiracy. Yeah, it doesn't pass the smell test.

an open mind. Okay, I am perfectly willing to be wrong, and as someone who you know, I trust in respect took it seriously and was like, really give it a genuine listen. But the scraps of quote unquote evidence that they offered just do not justify this really extraordinary conclusion. And it is an extraordinary conclusion. I mean, as you said,

it sounds like something out of a spy novel. So if you're going to assert something that is really extraordinary and also potentially, you know, leads to escalation and provocation and all of these sorts of things, you may have some real stuff to back it up.

a foreign advert National Institutes of Health. In addition to that Intel assessment that said, you know, we really don't think that this came from a foreign adversary, there were new studies that were just conducted by National Institutes of Health NIH which failed to find any evidence of brain injury in scans or blood markers of the diplomats and spies who said they suffered symptoms of Heavna syndrome.

more strongly about their conclusions. So, you know, the very latest studies from the NIH, for what it's worth, say we don't actually even see signs of injury in these individuals. I don't want to say like that they didn't suffer something real, because even if it is stress induced psychosomatic, that can still be experienced as a very real and

potentially debilitating event. So this is not to dismiss them or say they're lying and they didn't really suffer anything whatsoever, but to put all these instances together and to allege one culprit and to craft this narrative which really, you know, beggars belief is just it's just a way too many.

hostile to women, hostile to gaze. And I find that I like to live in a culturally Christian country, although I do not believe a single word of the Christian faith.

And a lot of them were attacking Dawkins. They're like, oh, he tore down Christianity and he advocated for secularism, and now he's coming back and calling himself a cultural Christian. And I'll just say this, like I followed Richard Dawkins for a long time, was personal inspiration. I had my cringe atheist phase like anybody else. He was a young man on YouTube, had copies of The God Delusion and gave him out to people. Read every book that the

man has literally ever written. At least they stopped ten years ago. I don't know if he's written.

return to this. The reason I was annoyed by that is because having read and listened to a lot of Dawkins, even attended one of his lectures, we could put this up there here on the screen, which I went back and found is he's been calling himself a cultural Christian

here for quite a long time. And why I was annoyed in terms of the Christian reaction to Dawkins is that Dawkins has always said that he ascribes, as he points out here, a celebration of Judeo Christian type values, but not in the actual text of the Bible and of the religion of Christianity himself. Egalitarianism, equality, just the general like the general respect of English common law, which of course, you know, even atheists and secular people like

me can acknowledge comes from a Christian tradition. That's what he meant by the term. So anyway, for me, watching a lot of the Christian right attack Dawkins as somehow being hypocritical, I mean, frankly, he's been saying stuff like this for twenty somethings, probably before I was even born, but at least in my adult lifetime, nothing that he said was new anyway, I'm curious.

full right turn now. But the part that I saw more reaction to, and which I personally reacted more to, were the comments about Islam, which again are actually not new.

to you. Because he clearly has a huge blind spot. The problem is not any particular faith. The problem is extremist in any faith. I think we can look throughout history and see that, I mean Christianity. It was used to justify slavery, it was used to justify Jim Crow. Right, do I think those are true and faithful readings of Christianity. No, But I mean I'm also not a religious believer at all, so I'm not really the person to determine that, right.

But even if you look just right now, what's unfolding in Gods, which I think is particularly why there was, you know, a heightened sensitivity to the smearing of Islam in this context, is you have Muslims who committed a terror attack on October seventh, committed atrocities, no doubt about that.

by and large committed by Christians. So to think that any religious faith has a monopoly on truth and justice, or to think that any religious faith has a monopoly on violence and hatred, is just I think incredibly ahistorical and inaccurate. So, you know, a lot of what I saw in my timeline, which is again, you know, I

think to give us some credit. Part of what makes the show interesting is that we, you know, have to expose each other to these different conversations that are happening in different corners of the world, and the Internet was a lot of like, actually, thank you Richard Dowkins for confirming what we suspected about your actually ideological worldview based on your previous comments, and by extension, what others who were sort of in this fervent new atheist camp were really about at the time.

are bad. No, absolutely, I don't believe that in for any individual person. I do believe that the application of said theocratic like law on people is very counter to a lot of the things that we value here in the West, So for example, egalitarianism, equality, the treatment of women. I mean personally, I'm repulsed by it. Like whenever I'm in the Middle East and I see for women shrouded in a burka walking ten paces behind their husband, I think it's disgusting. I know that they have no rights.

In India, for example, where my family's from. This has been a huge tension where India has effectively an English common law system. But then you have two hundred million or some Muslims who want to or at least some want to live with their ability. This was a huge controversy about the ability to divorce their wives by saying that they divorced them as that required in Sharia law. And it comes into major tension because then they're saying

that it's discrimination if you don't allow that. Whenever you're trying to have equal application and protection of the law. So I'm not saying individual Muslims are bad. I would never say that about anybody. I think that extreme interpretations, or I would more put it this way. I would never want to live under Christian theocracy. Got a taste of it growing up in college station. I definitely wouldn't want to live in Muslim theocracy. Got a taste of

that as well. And I in general, you know, like and respect places places like Thailand, I think, India, to some extent, Japan and others which have non Western interpretations and or worldviews in their governance that when you combined with English common law and some Judeo Christian values and influence, you come to more of an equal application and understanding of the laws.

in Israel. I wouldn't want to live under that either, And you're absolutely right, I don't want to live under a Muslim theocracy either. But to you know, point to this one faith and say, oh, this is the bad one and Christianity is the good one. I just like I said, I think if you take any even take your religion out of it, if you take any fervently held ideological belief system, someone is going to pervert it to do horrific things. We've seen this throughout history. But

religion is a particularly potent one. And perhaps my view of this is part of why originally I like Twkins, and you know, I like the way that he laid out these arguments. Religion is so potent because the minute that you see Okay, number one, these people who share my belief these are the tribe, These are the people who really count, really matter, and God is on our side. The things that can be used to justify are horrifying.

And you know, I keep bringing up the example of Israel Gaza because obviously this is you know, top of mind for me and many people around the world right now. But just think about you have these settlers in the West Bank who truly believe that the righteous and holy thing to do is to steal the land of Palestinians, potentially by force and if necessary, murder them. They believe that they are righteously doing God's will when they do.

Just listen to that, Daniella Weiss, that settler activists. Sure she thinks she is righteous and absolutely moral. Again, no one faith has a monopoly on being twisted and perverted to justify things that in any other sort of moral context you could see clearly that this is wrong, period, end of story.

extremist interpretations of all of that. But it is a legitimate question as to wire should this be tolerable and acceptable? But I have a Western style democracy.

as you've had Hindu nationalism on the rise. These are natural, you know, inherent tensions when they run up against each other for real. Frankly, it's just a battle of values. It's like, what do we actually want? What do we have evilack application of the law? Should we not like should we allow people to marry three people because their religion says though I think no, but they say yes. I mean, it's one of those where I don't think that's on America. And if you look, why does Saudi

have the regime they have? Okay, but why does the run how the regime they have?

here what we tolerate, what we think is acceptable. And I would stand what I think what Dawkins is trying to say. For a Judeo Christian influence, English common law egalitarianism, which is what I believe in, that is absolutely counter to Christian theocracy. Luckily that is mostly on the decline here in this country. Luckily we don't have the same Jewish level. I guess here in the US in terms

of Orthodox Judaism is taking over the entire culture. But that is not necessarily the case of majority Muslim countries that are all across the world, Indonesia, for example, Malaysia, any of these places, there's high levels of diversity and others, but there are what I think are troubling ways that they do. He's right, I mean, which they treat women or in terms of how they have different views of

what homosexuality or any of this. I think it's abhorn and I think it's bad WHI and I don't think we should have it here.

moral equivalents. Universal values and secularism where yes, people's religions are respected and they have a right and you know, freedom to religion, but also within the confines of respecting and acknowledging basic human rights.

to Judaeo Christianity, And I would say, that's bullshit. You can look at countries like India or Japan or Korea anywhere else that don't have majority Christian populations. A Thailand actually is a country that I truly love deeply. Buddhist culture, lots of egalitarianism, no Christian influence, so I can give the counter two. I'm only bringing in what I think he is best trying to say, and I'm giving him charity because I also think that he's done a lot

of good in this world. So it opened up a lot of people's eyes.

do see often a very like permissive nature. Unfortunately, but I think elements of the American left when they don't really grapple with some of the actual tenets of let's say, you know, of like widespread, like deeply fundamentalist Islamic values,

especially when we're talking about immigration. Which is why I guess I'm standing for Dawkins in this entire purpose is like I believe very much in being able to scrutinize, anti debate what is acceptable in US, specifically in the US and also in the West, what we want and what we don't want to encourage, and what we think should be acceptable or not, as opposed to let's say, trying to litigate how people should be treated in Afghanistan,

that's Afghanistan's problem. Does that make sense in terms of what I'm.

the failure of their alleged war goals. They destroyed Gaza mascer tens of thousands of civilians, but Hamas is still able to regroup in northern Gaza. But is anything the Israeli government is claiming about Shifa even true given their history a brazen lies in general, and specifically a history

of lying about this particular hospital. I'm gonna break down for you everything we know about what appears to have been a massacre on a historic scale in one of the most sensitive places you can possibly imagine a hospital meant to care for the sick has instead been transformed into a slaughterhouse. So first a little bit of background. One of the fiercest early propaganda wars in Israel's war on Gaza came in the early weeks when they launched an all out pr blitz to justify the storming of

Al Shifa Hospital complex. Net Yahoo led a multi media presentation asserting that Hamasa build a doctor Evil style layer underneath of this hospital, a command and control node or even now, he claimed they were operating and where they expected to be able to locate hostages once they went in. The US government provided a major propaganda assist in this operations,

being reporters aboard Air Force One. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said quote, I can confirm for you that we have information that Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jahad used some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including Al Shifah, and tunnels underneath them, to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages. Hamas and the Palestinian Palestinian Islamic judhad pig members operate a command and control node from Al.

were led to believe. There were no hostages held under the complexes, was also claimed, and the Israelis never came cold loose to proving their wild claims about a Hamas command and control node, as illustrated by their fanciful computer animations. What's more, we've now learned from Democratic Senator Chris Van Holland that Kirby and Biden they were lying about what

our own intel actually showed. In recent comments the Washington Post, the Senator, who is a key Biden ally, by the way, delicately said there was a quote disconnect between the administration's public statements and the classified findings, noting important and subtle differences.

fair game. And second because Shifa was a center of civilian life in Gaza City, a city that was being systematically sacked by the IDF. Attack Shifa and no part of civilian life is untouchable. Attack Shifa and there will be nothing left for Palestinians to return to in northern Gaza. Sure enough, after Shifa, other hospital raids, attacks on ambulances, medical clinics, and the like, they were barely remarked upon

in the media. Once Israel got away with this raid on the most important medical complex in all of Gaza, they then operated with impunity with regards to the rest. According to Euromed Monitor, Israel is now attacked two hundred and fifty six health care facilities, including twenty eight hospitals. They've killed hundreds of doctors, injured hundreds more. I'll remind you that hospitals are supposed to be completely off limits

in war, except in very rare circumstances. That, of course, has served as no barrier for Israel, or for the Biden administration for that matter. So that's the background here. Let's turn now to what we know about this latest two week raid on Shifa.

very similar treatment. In fact, the Gods of Health Ministry reports that five doctors were ultimately killed by Israel over the course of this rate. Journalists were able to confirm multiple instances of Palestinians attempting to flee the area, waving white flags and still fired on by Israeli tanks Israeli guns. But during the raid, as we all feared the worst, we had little insight into what was actually unfolding on

the hospital grounds. Once Israeli forces withdrew, the government issued celebratory declarations claiming that Israel had killed the bad guys and save the innocence. Here's how former Israeli Prime Minister of Tully Bennett described the operation, quote amazing battlefield achievement. The IDF is just completed a two week operation on a Hamas command center that Hamas embedded within the Shifa

Medical Center. Hamas use staff and patients as human shields in order to cause maximum civilian casualties as to create more criticism and pressure on Israel. The results are remarkable. Six thousand civilians were evacuated by the IDF to keep them safe. Two hundred Hamas terrorists were killed. Five hundred Hamas terrorists have been captured. No civilian was killed, not one, he says. It goes on to finish, I'm proud to be Israeli and proud of the IDF. A beacon of light,

an amazing battlefield achievement. No civilians killed, beacon of light. Oh really, Let's see the results of these IDF beacons of light, shall we. Here is what Al Shifa, the largest hospital in all of Gaza, looks like now as you can see it is utterly destroyed. It no longer exists as a medical facility. Now I know, Gaza can feel foreign, it can feel far away. Imagine this was the hospital in your town, maybe where you were born, or maybe where your children were born. Imagine it was

the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins. It's actually so much more central than those famous hospitals because it comprise a full thirty percent of all of the healthcare delivery in Gaza. Now it is burned out, gutted, reduced to rubble. Before and after satellite images show you the absolute scale and totality of the destruction, both of Alshifa and of everything around it. On the left, you can see Alshifa from two years ago, looks like the overhead

in American city streets with bustling traffic. Large medical complex are outed by smaller, likely residential apartment looking buildings. On the right, you see Shifa now gone, or the highways, courtyards, parking lots, and sidewalks replaced with dirt that was turned up everywhere after armored bulldozers plowed up the ground. What few trees remain appear charred or dead. Many of the

surrounding buildings are just gone. They're flattened. Reportedly, more than a thousand houses in the area were demolished, and Shifa itself is damaged, unrecognizable, not salvagable. Al Jazeera's Ismael al Ghoul attempted to capture the feeling on the ground. He said, quote, there is no life here. The complex is in ruins and cannot be revived. That alone should shock us. But the destruction of this physical place, formerly a place of healing and center of life, is nothing compared to what

we're learning now about the human carnage. According a human rights organization EUROMED monitor, the Israeli Army carried out a massive, shockingly horrific military operation in Al Chifa Medical Complex in Gaza City over the course of the past two weeks. According to them, indiscriminately targeting and attacking Palestinians regardless of their civilian status, professional standing, gender, age, or health condition.

others with their heads and limbs severed, have been discovered both inside Al Chifa Medical complex and in the hospitals surrounding area end quote. This is an almost unimaginable toll. Additionally, according to the World Health Organization, twenty one patients died during this latest siege of Al Shifa. Gruesome videos from the scene, which I've chosen not to show you, are consistent with this horrific assessment. The videos show burned, zip tied, decomposing,

crushed bodies strewn about the hospital courtyard. Some of the bodies are clearly those of children, though they are destroyed beyond any recognition. Journalists on the ground report stray dogs showing on the remains in an overpowering scent of death. Some eyewitnesses and journalists have suggested that some of the visible human remains may also be from previous temper graves that were duga and desecrated as part of this operation. A CNN journalist on the ground described the scene as

a quote horror movie. Bulldozers, they say, crushed bodies and people everywhere around and in the yard of the hospital. The surrounding area was not spared either. According to this journalist quote, we found entire families dead and their bodies are decomposed in houses around the hospital. Entire families killed

by Israel. According to CNN, a doctor affiliated with Doctors Bound Borders who had previously volunteered in Gaza, had this to say of the toll on civilians and on medical personnel in particular.

That innocence, including doctors, women and children were slaughtered. And we know that the bidaministration's decision to back the initial propaganda campaign and to lie about our own intelligence in order to support the raid itself has paved the way to this fresh wore for Joe Biden regards to Israel, there are no red lines, only green lights.

how Israel's response has been. It's been unconsidable, unprecedented, and you know, there's genocide, weaponized starvation, and I personally have lost over one hundred family members in my extended family, some of my favorite cousins in the world, such as you know Iman for example, She's my cousin who her her husband, and her four kids in one air strike.

to track down the names and the documents. And it's actually like a very rigorous process too that the Health Ministry and as goes through in order to sort of verify the individual verify their files. But a lot of the files are missing too because they've targeted all these sort of government institutions. Entire families wiped off the registry like they're like legal documentation of their existence. So this is what I know so far, but it's very difficult to track the deaths.

And we met with his staffers, and I've gotten really good at sort of gauging people's reactions and like because I look them straight in the eye and I tell them my story and about my family, and we do get some very robotic answers, which yeah, I'm thinking exactly,

we'll relate it to the congressman or the senator. We'll you know, we'll get here's my email, get in touch with us, and we can have a longer conversation than then we email them, and like we never get a response, obviously, but there have been like with with Van Hollins Uh. I think it was his chief of staff and maybe

Legislative director. They I could tell after the meeting they were shaken up because you know, there was the whole group of us, and we really like we sort of just stopped any sort of like political talk and we're just like, you guys need to understand, like, this is what's happening. This is like a human issue more than

just a policy issue. And I think they actually hurt us and since then and so part of what we in that meeting was we were disappointed because he gave that whole speech before voting to send the bill to the House from the Senate.

why doesn't the policy sort of match the rhetoric. And we really pressured them on that, and I think that's caused him to go even more in that direction towards speaking up for Palestinians.

in the eye. What would your message be to those people who are feeling disheartened about the possibility of having any sort of voice in our quote unquote democracy.

go and just it's it's very uncomfortable. It is very uncomfortable, and you you do need to sort of like let go of that discomfort and just go for it. And I would say, don't underestimate the effect of that because we've heard from staffers as well in the offices, like sometimes they'll like chase after us after we've left and say like thank you so much for doing that, Please keep doing it, Like they get so embarrassed, especially when we bird dog them, they get so embarrassed.

really missing. People see a lot of numbers and like stats and like data about just how awful it is and unprecedented, But even in looking at all of that, it numbs.