Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here, and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show. Some interesting and possibly good news. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. The share of US adults who are identifying with select political affiliations has gone to an all time low for Democrats and Republicans at the very same time that independence
has actually increased. So in two thousand and four, thirty five percent of the American people identified as Democrat, thirty three percent as Republican, thirty one percent as independent. Today, in twenty twenty three, forty nine percent of Americans identify as independent. Only twenty five percent respectively identify as Democrat and Republican, So basically half of the entire count tree
sees themselves as politically independent. At the moment, that approval for the two of the major parties is all the way at the bottom, and that actually raises a lot of questions around the way that we even run our political electoral system, because we elevate people through primaries and then throw them at independence.
But if the vast majority of people don't believe in.
Those parties themselves, then why are we allowing like hyperactive as basis of people who we don't necessarily agree with us to surface, people who are then thrown at us in terms of our two options. So I think it's really interesting the more that these parties collapse.
I mean, I know why the system is the way it is.
Yeah, I would love I would love the sort of reforms that you're referring to to open it up. So there was more more of an opportunity for third party candidates that more accurately reflect perhaps the views of this group of nearly a majority of Americans who view themselves as politically independent. Underneath the data, what they say is driving this phenomenon primarily young people. They quote Apoltter It says it was never unusual for younger adults to have
higher percentages of independence than older adults. What is unusual is that as gen X and millennials get older, they are staying independent rather than picking a party as older generations tended to do. And I have no doubt that gen Z also is disproportionately politically independent. Now that's different. See like the corporatist centrists types like the no labels of the world would look at this data and see they're crying out for moderation. They're crying out for what
we have to offer. But don't misread the data in that way. Many of these people who are politically independent, you know, they may be people who were affiliated with the Birdie movement and are actually more to the left of the party on a variety of issues and just see the Democratic Party as like, you know, corporate shills, as you know, sort of like how I see them. Or they may be to the right of the Republican Party. So the fact that they identify as politically independent doesn't
mean they're like wishy washy centrists. Doesn't mean they don't have really clear or hard ideological or you know, even relatively extreme views or what would be conceived or perceived of as extreme in mainstream American discourse. So it's different than saying, like, oh, everybody's in the Center. It's just they're disgusted with these two political parties and don't feel like they're actual effective, actually effective in getting things done.
That's an important point.
It's not that people want like lower taxes on corporations.
They're not. Like Joe Manchin stands, I.
Think the political system is broken.
I think things that are all over the place that are both simultaneously Republican and Democratic ideas, and I don't like the brand of the parties themselves. Look how it manifests.
At the end of the day.
The vast majority of people still actually do kind of code right and left.
That is actually pretty clear.
And unfortunately most that tax onto then Republican and Democrat. The question is whether those two vessels are the ones that should be the ones that attract those types of votes and maybe not something else.
So look, I don't know how it works out.
Yeah, the last time that we had a major political part I have one behind me, the Bull.
Moose Project or the Bull Moose Party.
It was really the last time it was I wouldn't even say electorally viable, but at least one a decent amount of votes. I guess outside of Ross pro it takes a lot for parties to crumble and for things to change.
But I mean, it can happen.
Has happened twice in modern American history since eighteen sixty, so I don't know.
I haven't lost all hope just yet.
Yeah.
Well, the other thing that has more happened in more recent history is basically like revolutions within the parties themselves.
You can think of, in a.
Very bad way, in my opinion, the way that Bill Clinton and the DLC took over the Democratic Party and really hijacked it and turned it into something different.
You could think of the way the Tea.
Party changed the Republican Party and then Donald Trump changed the Republican Party again. You can think of the way that in certain states, like in Nevada, the Bernie Sanders wing of the party was able to basically take over the Democratic Party and make it into something different than what it was. So there's more precedent in recent history for something like that happening.
But I just look at.
This data and I see it as basically like an opportunity that people's eyes are open, and it's also someone but contradictory with the fact that you know, there are so many fewer swing voters. You know, even as people are saying they're independent, they're very consistently voting in a party line fashion.
But I do think the fact that there.
Is clearly this disenchantment with the two major parties creates an opening for positive change and also, frankly, has created an opening for a different media ecosystem that's just not just like partisan cheerleading the way that the cable news networks are.
So I see it as a good thing in general.
Absolutely So, all right, we'll see how it works out.
All right, guys, got a little Amazon HQ two taxpayer hustle update for you.
Go and put this up on the screen.
We previously reported that, you know, there was this whole nationwide contest of Amazon just basically extracting as much tax money of jurisdictions as they possibly could before deciding to land in New York and Northern Virginia, places where they were going to go to anyway to start with. But now they get to do it with, you know, nearly billion dollars in subsidies. So Amazon recently announced they're postponing a lot of their development there. They're not even building
what they said they were going to build. But guess what, They still want their money. They are kicking off a process that means they could receive more than one hundred and fifty two million dollars in state money by the summer of twenty twenty six. All of the tax credits here are based on the number of jobs they create
technically and not based so much on the construction. And so there's a couple of things going on here because it's not only have you know, the dreams of development and shops and restaurants and hotels, those haven't come to fruition at all, in part because they aren't going forward with this huge additional development, which of course would bring in construction workers and all sorts of additional work to
the area, but also post pandemic. Their workers, even if they're creating these jobs, are not working in.
The office full time.
So much like other places around the country, you don't have this, you know, glut of office workers who want to go to life lunch and want to do whatever office workers do during the day and spend money in the region. So this has been a disaster for Virginia, I would say, And you know, Amazon, in spite of it all, they still want their one hundred and fifty million bucks.
Yeah.
I think this is why it's complete BS, is that the government of Virginia showered them in tax benefits that they are now not fulfilling their obligations. Because the basically the trade was like, well, all these people who have a lot of money will move here. Small businesses and actually a lot of apartment complexes were going around in that area.
I live pretty close by.
A lot of businesses were opening and banking on the idea that these Amazon executives were going to be moving in. And now they're pulling out, which is already actually a disaster you know, for.
The local economy. But then they want their tax benefits too.
It's like, well, hold on a second, and actually this vindicates a lot of the fight about what was going on in New York where New York at the time pulled its benefits. And you know, that was the other point with that at the time. New York City doesn't need to anybody in tax benefits to get people to want to work and live like a lot of business, A lot of people like the network effects of it, and you know, you know, especially on its face, it's a hell of a lot better place to.
Do business than San Francisco or Seattle.
I think if you take a look at variable crime rates, especially whenever we're talking about Manhattan. So they didn't need to and then Amazon was like, fie, we're going to go to Virginia. And then it didn't even work out for the state of Virginia. So it's actually very embarrassing.
This was a shakedown. The whole thing was a shakedown. They made this whole show. I mean, it's really embarrassing. I did a whole monologue. It's embarrassing when you go and look, it's sad at these little cities or places that are in long term decline because you know, they were deindustrialized or whatever.
And they were like, I'll.
Name my city after you, and I'll you know, like making all of these promises and putting together these pitch decks to try to lure Amazon with the thought that hey, if you know, if they showed up in a mid tier city, they could take it to the next level. They could revive a place that's struggling, they could go.
Somewhere in the heart and like Jera, it would be you know.
All like so many, so much possibility for what it could mean and then at the end of the process they locate in the two places where, by the way, Jeff Bezos already had residences, making it clear like this was where they were always going to choose. They just wanted to shake down the governments by doing this whole competition for as much as they were possibly worth.
And by the.
Way, Virginia, for all of the hundreds of millions that they ponied up in terms of tax incentives, nothing compared to what New York had offered them. New York had offered them way more, which is part of why that the plug ends up being pulled on that completely, because the price tag was just so insane and outrageous. But you can see even for Virginia this has not worked out, Amazon pulling the plug on development, still demanding their money.
That Arlington is quoted in this Arlington County, which where it's located, is quoted in this article saying the hotels, the short term rentals, all this stuff, none of this has shown up. None of this has materialized whatsoever. And then there's also this is typical of a corporate incentives.
Amazon was going to locate somewhere and so it just ends up being this like national race to throw a gigantic, extremely profitable company hundreds of millions of dollars that you know they don't need, and that could go to any other.
Number of state level priorities.
So anyway, just the last latest grow tesque slap in the face from Amazon.
To Virginia taxpayers.
Certainly right.
So, our partner Jordan Sheridan over with Status Quo, has been on the ground. He was at a strike recently by students at Rutgers University demanding better pay, among other things, and he asked gen Z about their view of America, about their view of the American dream.
I should not need.
To ask all of gen Z, some representatives of that generation, and the response is quite interesting.
Take a listen to it.
In the next ten years, factory jobs, truck drives, all these simpler jobs will be automated, and then we're gonna have more and more problems. Automation is going to kill a.
Lot of these jobs.
The market is dying and we're on the verge of a recession.
I'm just kind of waiting. At this point, We're not gonna be able to buy a house and dream.
I honestly believe that the American dream is dead for our generation. Frankly, our purchasing power is some of the lowest in history compared to prior generations compretered Millennials, compared to Baby Boomers and Gen X, our purchasing power is some of the lowest, combined with some of the highest costs of living ever.
Ever, so fears about technology. American dream is dead. I won't be able to buy a house. And they made a number of comments about how you know their parents, their grandparents, you know. For gen Z, they're like they were able to achieve these things. I have no hope of that in my left.
The only thing I would disagree with him is he was like talking about truck drivers. I don't think truck drivers will be irrelevant in five years. But I do think, unfortunately, a lot of the white collar jobs that college graduates are doing may not may be a lot more irrelevant than truck driving. I've been hearing about truck driving for a long time time now with chat GPT, and though it seems like what really is under threat is business
insider journalism entry students. So that's the only place I would quit. Well, but look, I hear this all the time, you know, from people who are my age from who are younger? A vast majority of our audience is either millennial or gen Z. So we see the things that resonate the most. Housing. I told you have been on this kick. I ever sid that Dame Ramsey monologue of just listening to these like horrific calls of people who are like I have six hundred thousand dollars in student debt,
I have a million dollars. They're on my age or younger who have a million dollars. Can you imagine having a million dollars in student debt? And it's one of those where like, yeah, he makes a quarter mill but like it's.
After tax and all.
That's going to take him ten years or so to pay that off. That's the only thing that he does.
And these are like the lucky p Yeah, these are the ones that quote unquote did the right things and made it who are in this position, And yeah, you go try to buy a house in any major metro area, forget about it. You know, unless you have the whole cash down payment from your parents or you know, another source, you're going to be priced down to that market. And I think what was stunning to me is the awareness and recognition that these two individuals had, but just how
much things were stacked against them. That is a real indictment of our society. I mean, the thing that you always hoped is that like your kids would have it better than you, And for most of American history that has been the case, where it's just like continued upward trajectory. You can expect more leisure time, you can expect, you know, a better house, you can expect a better education, you can expect better healthcare.
No longer the case.
And if you think that's not going to dramatically upend our politics as millennials and now gen Z come into power, into voting age, into increasing political awareness, you know, you got your eyes closed because this is a real reckoning set to happen. People are not just going to sit back and accept this. This is why you already see the bubblings of you know, the Starbucks workers movement, the
Amazon workers movement. You see them taking into their own hands, and you know, I think in some ways, you know, in some ways you see gen Z, you know, others super woke and they're into all this identity stuff.
But you also see some throwbacks.
To an older type of material politics which was really ascendant in America at a time when people couldn't take for granted some of the basics of like food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, et cetera, that a couple generations now have been able to basically take advantage of.
So, yeah, it's going to change everything.
I think ten years from now, when forty year olds have never had a house, have no assets, and are still in debt, I think that's when things are really going to be weird, because that's when you're going to have almost a majority of the country who is both had no upward mobility for their entire adult lives and are now on the bad side of middle age. Whenever you look at life expectancy tables. That's if there is
a flippaning. I think it'll come sometime around that. Not being able to have kids, not being able to buy a house, having zero assets, having no retirement, knowing social Security may work out for you or at very least is not going to tie you over for the next twenty or so years. What do you do in that situation? That's when I think things will get weird.
Yeah, I could definitely see that.
A new opera is coming to the Kennedy Center and boy, oh boy, is h something.
Thanks to our friends over.
A responsible Statecraft for flagging this one along with producer Griffin put this up on the screen. Killer Drone Opera lands at Kennedy Center this fall. It's got tears drama in F sixteen's Rounded is explosive fun for the whole family. Brought to you by General Dynamics. Let me read you
a little bit of the details here, they say. This fall, DC denizens will be treated to the world premiere of Grounded, an opera following an Air Force ace named Jess whose unexpected pregnancy forces her to leave behind her beloved F sixteen and join the quote chair Force. Throughout the show, the hot shot pilot wrestles with the mental impact of firing rockets from a Jordan in Afghanistan from a trailer in Las Vegas.
As just tracks.
Terrorists by day and rocks her daughter to sleep by night, the boundary between her world's becomes dangerously and Ad tells us the production is brought to you by presenting sponsored General Dynamics, one of the world's largest weapons companies. And oh, by the way, wouldn't you know it, the maker of Jess's favorite plane, apparently Sager. This is like a spinoff or like a redo of some one woman play that Anne Hathaway started by the same name, which actually had somewhat of a critique.
Of drone warfare, and hard to.
Imagine the same sort of dynamics occurring in this opera given that General Dynamics is the sponsor.
So I watched this Ethan Hawke movie, which is vaguely similar.
It came out in like twenty fourteen. It just looked up Good Kill was that movie.
It was fine, It wasn't particularly good, but they were trying to make the same point. And it's again it came more to like an anti drone more humanistic message. This one, I'm just gonna guess doesn't have that. Just really odd. It's especially odd that General Dynamics is sponsoring it.
It's like, I don't know, whatever.
Look, I think it probably is genuinely traumatic to like kill people like in a video game and know that it's real. That's kind of what the movie was about. I guess at its best, like that's what the play is about. But I think that at their worst, like what we're doing here is trying to turn it into some human drama story and miss like the actual implications of what it means to do this abroad is part of a broader like campaign of war.
So yes, yeah, I don't know.
There's also you know, this is like a particularly flagrant, in your face example of this type of thing. I mean, we also talk about the way that like General Dynamics and these other military industrial complex behema's sponsor, like Politico Playbook and all these other DC insider tip sheets and
media organizations. But then there's also this interaction between the Pentagon, these weapons makers and Hollywood as well, which frequently is a lot more under the radar, which you know is very like seldom picked up on the way that the Pentagon works with filmmakers to make sure that war is portrayed and that these battles are portrayed and their weapons systems are portrayed in a way that sort of like.
You know, plays up their version of.
What the American military is all about, what American foreign policy has been all about.
So here we have, in the nation's capital.
No less, General Dynamics actively sponsoring an opera about drone warfare. Pretty pretty extraordinary. May we could go we could go and.
Do a review of it.
I'm not sure I could take it.
I don't know.
I don't even like opera.
Have you even been to an opera?
I have been to one. It was okay. Yeah, you know, I'm just if we're going to go, like, I'm.
Not even like that big of a musical guy, but I would much rather go to a actual fun musical.
I mean watching Book of Mormon for examples, like a blast. This just sounds like, yeah.
I guess it's a taste you like have to cultivate, but I have no culture.
I think it's a taste for when TV didn't exist, people were willing to subject themselves to all kinds of things because life was bored. You know, people were dying of Typhus, and they were like, well, this is more interesting than that.
If you are a singer, maybe there's more to appreciate. Like I love the ballet because I grew up dancing, so I really enjoy it and appreciate it. But I totally understand how someone who didn't come up with that wouldn't be their things. So anyway, maybe I'll go to the opera and I'll let you guys, now, let.
Us know if you like the opera.
Quite a bit of attention being paid to the Miller Noll CEO, who's gone viral after she gave an internal rant to employees in which she told them to stop worrying about why they weren't going to get a bonus and to start working harder and to lead by example. We'll tell you a little bit about why that's so hypocritical after you see the video.
Let's take a listen.
Questions came through about how can we stay motivated if we're not going to get a bonus? What can we do?
What can we do?
Some of them were nice and some of them were not so nice. I'm going to address this head on. The most important week thing we can do right now is focus on the things that we can control. None of us could have predicted COVID, none of us could have predict to supply chain, none of us could have
predicted bank failures. But what we can do is stay in front of our customers, provide the best customer service we can, get our orders out our door, treat each other well, be kind, be respectful, focus on the future because it will be bright. It's not good to be in a situation we're in today. But we're not going to be here forever. It is going to get better. So lead, lead by example. Treat people well, talk to them,
be kind, and get after it. Don't ask about what are we going to do if you don't get a bonus?
Get the day on twenty six million dollars.
Spend your time and your effort thinking about the twenty six million dollars we need and not thinking about what are you going to do if we don't get a bonus?
All right?
Can I get some commitment for that?
I would appreciate that.
I had an old boss who said to me one time, you can visit Pitycity, but you can't live there. So people leave PITYCD. Let's get it done. Thank you, have a great day.
Okay. So psychotic really all around one of.
The reasons we're an energy from this lady.
This is stone cold crazy, absolute craziness. You could see it in the eyes. And what do we learn about her? She herself received a three point nine million dollar bonus in executive compensation on top of her one point one million dollar fixed salary. Now, what she's referring to the twenty six million is the overall sales goal of the company as to why the employees won't be getting a bonus and or a raise.
Here's the thing.
If everybody in the company is not getting a bonus, that's one of the as a leader you could be like, listen, I'm.
Not taking any bonus now, I'm taking a bonus.
That's how it is. You know this, We're going to get together. You make money, I make money, period. I don't even think people would care. Then if she got paid four millions. She's the CEO of a company based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It's got eleven thousand employees. Okay, reasonable, I guess. But when you are paying yourself and then you're lecturing these people who make way less than you.
And if you're assuming here, people work in sales, so a lot of them live and die by bonus, not just about their base salary, yeah, whether you can literally feed your kids. Yeah, And you're saying stop the pity city thing is perfect. I've watched the video fifteen twenty times at this point. I just can't get over the narcissism, the way in which she thinks that she's better than everybody else.
And here's the best part. We want her LinkedIn profile.
She's all about diversity, equity and inclusion and like feminism and all that stuff, but not for just being just being a decent person to your employees.
That's the crazy part.
The thing that gets there's a lot that gets me here. But you can tell she's kind of like keeping it together at the very beginning, and then it just becomes.
Increasingly angry it are in hinds.
She's clearly like personally hurt that people are wondering if they're going to be able to get paid and feed their families or whatever. Miller know, their primary products is apparently office chairs and so posts. You know, during the pandemic and post pandemic, with people not being in the office as much, the demand for office chairs has plummeted. So she's you know, still doing okay getting her four million dollar bonus.
Now worries about her.
But the thing that actually Yegor is a person who flagged this clip for me initially, and he made the point that you know, for the boss class, it's totally expected and understood that they'll be out for the money, that they'll be looking at their compensation, they'll be maximizing their compensation package. They'll be locking in their golden parachute. If they screw up the company, they'll still get to
walk away, okay. But then they try to sell to the workers that they should be in it just purely.
For noble reasons, about.
The family, about the project they're engaged, and how dare you even worry about what your compensation is ultimately going to be? How could you not be just committed to
this team of selling office chairs. So it's incredibly psychologically manipulative too, And I think revealing of a tactic that is deployed all the time in America, of trying to sell people on this like deeper mission or this family that you're a part of in lieu of expecting actual compensation for the labor that you're committing to the profits of the business.
Completely. Yeah, it also bothers me.
You and I now have people who work with us, and it's one of those things where I cannot I wouldn't. You can never cut somebody's pay and take more money yourself.
Oh, I would be. I could not live with myself.
I can't imagine talking to someone like that.
Never.
Never.
It's a city city.
But unfortunately, yeah, most people who are But I've worked for people like that.
I'm sure you have to. Everybody's had a boss. There's something about when you beat when we are a boss.
For a lot of people, maybe they just like have amnesia about what it was like to be treated like shit by your boss.
But you know that one, it really struck a nerve, and not just.
Me, I think a lot of people out there, because I almost have felt it a little bit.
Man.
Well, it's I even feel so small when you have not when these type of people will just rule your lives.
Yeah.
Well, and there's this cultural narrative that feeds people like this that there they deserve to be in this position of power, and that causes them to truly look down on the workers that they're in charge of. And so it treats this disgraceful power trip like psychopathy as you see displayed in this video.
Very true. All right, we'll see you guys later.
So don Trump was indicted and arraigned. No one is above the law depending on the law, because there are certain laws that the entire US is above, and that includes Trump. Now, he may or may not see consequences for this batch of charges, but there are other offenses that he will definitely not go down for And they're the kind of offenses that have been committed to varying degrees under every living president, from Carter to Bush to Obama, and today I want to talk about some of them.
Welcome to breaking points. If you've seen this video, you've heard the story. In nineteen seventy four in East Tmoor, this new government took over the Fredelen Party, a democratic socialist pro independent party. They want self determination for East Temor, so obviously no one was into it. Australia, the UK, the US and Indonesia all agreed that East tim Or should probably just become part of Indonesia. Self determination was off the table. In December nineteen seventy five, Indonesia invaded
East Temoor. Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger go over to Indonesia to see the president there and they tell them that they're totally cool with this.
Now.
Indonesia at the time held more political prisoners than anywhere else in the world. Ford even warned the president there, if you want Congress to keep approving aid packages for you, you should probably let some prisoners go. And so, after a lot of negotiating, Indonesia announced plans to release thirty thousand political prisoners over three years, so that quieted Congress enough.
Nineteen seventy seven, Carter's inaugurated. Meanwhile, Indonesia is committing atrocities in East Team Or, reports coming out alleging fifty thousand to one hundred thousand civilians dead, but the State Department basically dismisses this. The goal was to improve relations with Indonesia, not have them be a pariah state. So the National Security Council they recommend downplaying East Teamwor. You have people saying just focus on the thirty thousand political prisoners being
released instead. National Security Advisor Brazinski, father of MSNBC host Mika Brazinski, is saying that these Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia, provide a hospitable climate for our investments. Also, the assumption by the Carter administration and others was that East Tmoor becoming part of Indonesia, that was an inevitability at this point. At the same time, the CIA is saying Indonesia is running out of weapons and they can't really control the
countryside of East Timor. In nineteen seventy eight, Vice President Walter Mondale goes on this tour of the region. He goes to Indonesia and offers them sixteen Skyhawks, and now fast forward to two thousand and six. The East Team War Truth Commission concluded that nineteen seventy seven to nineteen seventy nine was the worst humanitarian crisis in East tam War's history, and the key to Indonesia's assault was aerial bombardment by OV ten Broncos F five's and Skyhawk A
four airplanes. By nineteen eighty one, between one hundred and eight thousand and one hundred and eighty thousand people died out of a population of six hundred thousand, massacring civilian populations. Wars of aggression, we're talking about war crimes and crimes against humanity and aiding war crimes, say by supplying fighter jets can be a violation of the law of armed
conflict and also a war crime. On August twentieth, nineteen ninety eight, President Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack on a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. The Alshifah Pharmaceutical Plant was the target. This plant supplied half of Sudan's medicines and a lot of they're veterinary medicines. Now is there a good reason to blow up such a place. I mean maybe, but that would be an extraordinary set of circumstances. By the way, do you know who owned the factory? Maybe
they were manufacturing chemical weapons. Maybe they're manufacturing the x nerve gas. As a matter of fact, a soil sample was taken nearby containing two and a half times the normal amount of empta, which is a chemical used in the x nerve gas. This was the main evidence showing that the factory produced the nerve gas. They also thought the plant might be linked to Osama bin Laden, but as George Tennant said, that wasn't ironclad. Also get this.
One piece of evidence was that, unlike the websites of other known pharmaceutical manufacturers in Sudan, this company's website did not mention any products. Only terrorists have bad websites. The State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research put together a report for Secretary of State Madelin all Right before the attack. It basically said, our evidence isn't really enough to justify this, but it was a foregone conclusion this plant had to go.
Wait who owns the factory? Officials are raising concerns up to the night before the attack. But August twentieth, they blow up this pharmaceutical plant that was maybe making the x nerve gas. No, they weren't, They were just making medicine. Also, they still don't know who owns the factory. It ends up being a Sudanese businessman named Salah Idris. Conveniently, though, he turns out to have an indirect connection to Osama bin Laden. They freeze his accounts at various Bank of
America branches. They kind of got it right by accident, maybe, but at least this wasn't all for nothing. Oh no, except Idris denied that he had any connection to any terrorist group. He sues the government and the us unfreezes his assets. It was all for nothing. Can we at least learn something from this? Though probably not. Someone from the State Department wanted to draft a report outlining the
issues with the evidence. Obviously, it got killed by higher ups, and Albright apparently was not interested in having that debate rehashed.
Case closed.
The month after the attack, Human Rights Watch comes out with an open letter to Bill Clinton saying international humanitarian law says that you have to do everything feasible to make sure you're hitting a legitimate military target and it really seems like you didn't, which would mean you're in violation of the law of armed conflict or lowak. But funny enough, blowing up Sudan's primary source of anti malaria drugs is not the scandal Clinton is remembered for. Okay,
So Bush is an easy one. For one thing, the Bush administration authorized an international torture program after nine to eleven black sites popped up in places like Afghanistan and Romania and Thailand. The CIA's secret detention program, entailing prolonged incommunicado detention without trial, violated international legal prohibitions against enforced disappearances.
Disappearances violate or threatened to violate a range of rules of international human rights and humanitarian law, including arbitrary deprivation of liberty, torture, and the right to life. Waterboarding is torture. Bush endorsed waterboarding and admitted to using it. This covers Bush, Dick Cheney, former CIA director George Tennant, and Condoliza Rice,
who apparently gave the first known approval of waterboarding. I haven't watched their master classes, but if they have, sections on running international torture programs and never facing consequences for it. I mean they are the experts in that there were over five hundred drone strikes during Obama's two terms. Let's go over some of the legality.
Simply put, these strikes have saved lives. Moreover, America's actions are legal. We were attacked on nine to eleven Within a week, Congress overwhelmingly authorized the use of force. Under domestic law and international law. The United States is at war with al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associated forces.
Okay, so, paraphrasing Yaleen Policy Review, the associated forces Obama's talking about are essentially co belligerents. That's the relationship between third party states and warring parties. This is controversial, and it is far from clear that the groups at issue are sufficiently organized and associated with al Qaeda to render them co belligerents under international law. The claim was essentially that the laws of war enable the US to kill
anyone anywhere. That position is highly legally contested, and to accept the idea that anyone anywhere in the world can be killed, even if civilians may be killed two would in effect mean recognition of the concept of a global battlefield. International human rights law is the generally accepted framework for dealing with acts of terror in the international community, and under that there is no right to pre plan intentional killing and there is no tolerance for the death of bystanders.
No state has the right to consent to US violation of these rights. Also, drone strikes aren't even necessarily productive in their goal strikes, and Yemen had apparently increased support for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Okay, so on to Trump. Trump did watch Shark Week with a porn star in a hotel room, but his sins as president actually get much worse than that. Yemen is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world because since twenty fifteen, Saudi Arabia has been bombing.
Them into the Stone Age.
There have been about twenty thousand civilian casualties, in part because the bombing raids target infrastructure and schools and hospitals. Now, Obama had asked Saudi Arabia pretty nicely to try a little harder to not kill as many civilians, and Saudi Arabia keeps forgetting that he asked. So the thing is that targeting civilians is a war crime, which makes selling weapons to Saudi Arabia also a possible violation of international
humanitarian law. This war started under Oboma, and this fact was not lost on the administration because at a certain point people in the Obama administration said, Hey, we might be doing war crimes over here. We should maybe stop this. State Department officials who shepherd arm sales overseas are worried enough to consider retaining their own legal counsel and have discussed the possibility of being arrested while vacationing abroad.
So even though.
Obama initially supported Saudi Arabia, he ended up blocking a shipment of bombs he had originally okayed, but then Trump came in and sent the bombs anyway. But it is very unlikely people like this will ever be held accountable for the real crimes they commit where people actually die.
In fact, the US has been so hostile toward the idea of international justice and the International Criminal Court that the United States preemptively sanctioned ICC officials for opening an investigation in Afghanistan that might reach US personnel bik Obama
opting not to investigate anyone from the Bush administration. Every incoming administration offers that professional courtesy to the outgoing administration I mean, if Biden went after Trump for violating the laws of war for giving weapons to Saudi Arabia, how could he under any circumstances justify also selling weapons to Saudi Arabia? And with that That'll do it for me. If you found this video interesting, make sure you are
subscribed to Breaking Points. You can also check out my YouTube channel where I talk all about media and politics and things Lincoln description. Liking and sharing always helps.
Please do that.
Thank you to Breaking Points. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.
Hey there, my name is James Lee.
Thank you for tuning into another segment of my show fifty one to forty nine on Breaking Points, where I talk about topics related to business, politics and society. Now who here tried to watch The Love Is Blind Season four reunion on Netflix last Sunday and was met with an absolute debacle of a livestream. Netflix was just absolutely roasted by every one in the chat, online, Twitter, everywhere. Maybe a few of you guys tried to tune in.
I know Crystal and Sager had season two alum Nick Thompson on the show last year, so there's probably at least a little bit of overlap or crossover between fans of Breaking Points and fans of Love is Blind.
Now.
It's not lost on me, despite the online roasting that the societal impact of Netflix's technological blunder on its own is probably not consequential. But I do think the decisions that the Netflix executives made leading up to that livestream is a telling microcosm of everything that is wrong with America. If you remember, early in twenty twenty two, Netflix made headlines all over the tech and financial news in a bad way for losing subscribers for the first time in
a decade. Let's just say the shareholders were none too pleased. Some even sued the company, alleging Netflix had misled investors about declining subscriber growth. This is a bit of an aside, but does it not seem like shareholders win no matter what you know. When the stock goes up, the market's working perfectly, but when the stocks go down, they cry
foul anyway. Predictably, Netflix very quickly abandoned all of their previously held company values by raising prices and instituting new passwords sharing restrictions that can only be described as convoluted and confusing. So much so that they've had to walk back and amend their policies several times. I suppose at this point we really shouldn't be taking too much stock in a company's purported values. You know, every corporations, big
and small, they have one of these. If you go to their website, they have a mission statement and a company's values page. By now we should all know that is all bs Hi.
You said it was an emergency. The live stream isn't working like the live stream code based from my intern project four years ago.
Are you guys airing another Chris Rock.
Special Love Is Blind? You're using that for Love is Blind? No, I can't allocate more resources. It just runs with my laptop.
Yes, that is supposed to be funny, but it does get at something very real. This is reporting from the Wall Street Journal.
Quote.
Netflix is hiring more junior employees, from interns to recent college graduates. That's part of an expanded emerging talent recruitment initiative. People familiar with the program said previously the company had generally recruited experience staff, particularly for engineering roles. Wow, emerging talent recruitment initiative.
That is a new one.
What a euphemism for a directive that I imagine is nothing more than corporate speak for let's hire people who will work for less. Continuing on quote, Netflix is trying to better control rising cloud computing costs with longtime cloud partner Amazon Web Services. According to people familiar with that work, Netflix has long spent heavily on cloud and network infrastructure, viewing the reliability of its service as a key selling point.
Yes, that's totally how you get more subscribers.
Hey, you want to pay twenty bucks a month for Netflix, But sometimes it won't work because they don't want to invest in the infrastructure it takes to run their platform. Because shareholders are whining and the executives are all turning to their Mackenzie buddies for these genius ideas. Well, with all these tech layoffs, it's good to know that somebody's getting paid.
New Netflix co CEO Greg Peters is.
Set for a big raise with more than thirty million dollars in potential stock options and bonuses.
On top of a three million dollar salary.
Like I went to business school and I get the realities and economics of running a business, I do. Sometimes you got to make hard decisions to save the company.
But it is interesting, is it not? That time and time again, executive compensation is oftentimes completely divorced from company performance and unimpacted by these restructing plans, and more often than not, executives would rather hollow out their own company to the point of putting the entire company's operational infrastructure at risk than reduce their own pay.
I'm not trying to come super hard at ceopay, but you do have to acknowledge this as a conversation that is occurring, and there have been ongoing questions for years because CEO pay has increased many, many times faster than wages, which have been stagnant for forty years. Right, ceopay has
increase Yeah, three hundred and twenty two percent. Since nineteen seventy eight, CEOs were paid three hundred and fifty one times as much as a typical worker in twenty twenty, so CEO pays up thirteen hundred percent.
That kind of makes sense to me.
The average American wages have been flat for forty years.
The value these individuals, these elite executives provide is even more valuable than the percentage more they're getting paid. The average employee at Amazon versus Andy. If he gets paid three hundred and fifty times when they get paid, or even a thousand times, M'd say he's ten thousand times more important than the average employee his ability to do that, just like Steph Curry.
Yes, just like Steph Curry.
Totally the same thing running a business and playing basketball. But in all seriousness, the impact of Netflix gutting their infrastructure and bungling the Love is blind live stream is more or less inconsequential when it comes to society as a whole.
Probably some would disagree with that, but my point is Netflix is not unique.
That's how all companies operate, and that's why I'm talking about this today. Because for the most part, business executives aren't held accountable for anything. So business strategy one to one would simply be to make as much money as possible while cutting as many expenses as possible Legally. Of course, I'm sure there were a number of Netflix engineers who were like, I think this is a bad idea, but we're told to just push on. And in the case of Netflix, we could all have a few laughs at
their expense. But what if we're not talking about a live stream that crashed. What if it was a train that crashed carrying dangerous chemicals and toxic materials. Not a hypothetical obviously, and not a one off occurrence according to publicly available data. You need pausit this video if you want to read these four charts, But the data shows train crashes are commonplace in the US. Accidents, fatalities, derailments, and damages all on the rise over the past decade. Remember,
everything is an expense. Safety is an expense. It's all a big ruse. Nothing is coincidental. Just like Netflix engineers were told to sacrifice reliability, there is a clear mandate for rail engineers to skip safety checks because doing those tests would cost the company money. I'm using train crashes as an example here, but industrial accidents of all types are happening at alarming rates all over the country. We
talk about conspiracy theories, right here's one. Safety costs money, and if we can downplay safety, that means we can cut costs. And even if it train crashes, people won't care. I don't think it is a coincidence that the media, corporate media specifically, will sometimes downplay these types of stories for as long as possible. If that story will make corporations look bad because if they report what's actually going on, their advertisers will get mad and pay.
Them less money.
Like a lot of the early coverage I saw of the East Palestine train derailment was reporting not from cable news or any of the legacy outlets. The real information on the ground was coming from TikTok. I don't think it's a coincidence either, that the Transportation Secretary, Pete bootage Edge continuously drags his feet when it comes to taking
on these powerful industries. He's supposed to oversee what be trains or planes like this headline suggests, The truth is that there are decades long financial arrangements in place between rail companies, lobbyists, and lawmakers people to just doing his job will necessarily threaten the millions of dollars that flow in all directions. To tell you the truth, at this point, I can't even tell you where the military or corporations
end and where the government begins. And when that happens, it becomes very clear to the people, the public how rigged the game is, and naturally people become disillusioned and society will naturally become increasingly more unstable.
There was just another mass shooting in Kentucky? Why not?
Why not? You know what I get it now.
It's not about pronouns, it's not about the laft, it's not about the right.
They're not gonna ban guns. They have set the field. People are fing helpless.
Why wouldn't they just what's that?
There's no point. You're giving people no point to live.
You're giving people nothing to lose.
People getting violent on airplanes, mass shootings, riots, insurrections. These are all interconnected. Right When the whole of society exists on top of an economic structure built upon a failed and outdated economic maxim and that is shareholder privacy at
all costs. This is the expected result when institutions, whether they be governmental something like the Department of Transportation or private something such as the media, institutions that are supposed to function as advocates for citizens and report on abuses of power, end up as extensions of those corporations.
This is the expected results when.
Rules have been crafted that allow for the legal exploitation of large swaths of the country's population. This is the expected result. So let's end legalized bribery in this country.
There are at.
Least three amendments that have been proposed stuck in Congress. House Joint Resolution one, known as the Democracy for All Amendment, House Joint Resolution forty eight, known as the We the People Amendment, and House Joint Resolution twenty one, known as the People's Rights Amendment. Right to your members of Congress prioritize this issue. We are due badly for a constitutional
amendment that will return the country to the people. And that is how you get from Netflix's Love Is Blind to corporate malfeasans to trading, derailments, to insurrections.
And mass shootings. What do you think? Do you agree? Disagree?
Share your thoughts in the common section below, Because I think this is a very important discussion to have you want to explore more like this, I'd encourage you to check out and subscribe to my YouTube channel fifty one to forty nine with James Lee, where I break down a ton more topics related to business, politics in society. The link will be in the description below. Thank you so much for watching Breaking Points, and thank you for your time today.