It Could Happen Here Weekly 199

Also media.

Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, But you can make your own decisions.

What's up, y'alls.

Your favorite cousin again, prop is in the building? Yeah, saying well in your earbuds or speakers, however the hell you listen it is your favorite cousin is here. I am going to assume that that is the truth, and since you can't answer me, we just gonna go with that. It's been a while since I tapped in with y'all. I ruined your music festivals and then told you about your municipalities and your waters. Somebody reached out to us,

Because you might of facts are racist.

I have to approach it like this because crime has become a color mute term in the era of Trump. It kind of always has been, but it's really obvious now with the National Guard being unleashed onto the streets of Washington, d C. There's some sort of clearly obvious conflation between the houseless population, poverty, crime black folks. Like, it's all kind of like one thing with this food, which is not rocket science for y'all, it's just you

That's the crime because they No one has ever given me.

A legitimate reason as to why not having a place to stay as a crime.

Hell, you know, Margaret kill.

Joined him have this whole joint about loitering and loitering laws like truancies. Why I'm getting ahead of myself. The point is the crime is that you exist. So today I want to talk to y'all about something that y'all already know, which is it's never.

Been about the crime.

All right.

Now, First of all, some stuff that don't matter. Y'all still following Drake. I don't know if y'all like, Okay, my crowd is following Drake. Let me stop making a difference between us. But listen, so you know, Drake's suing UMG and his label over you know, not like us, and just proving that he's not like us anyway. The new thing in this man's lawsuit he is he's the man in UMG. Bring evidence over to push the teeth thing? What do I mean by to push the teeth thing?

Oh so Push It was right.

So what you're saying is in you trying to take down Kendrick You done snitched on twenty eighteen? You right, Okay, So because you had to label interfere with this battle fam. Now, if you want to hear some more like real just rapping ass rappers, there's this great battle that was going on between Joey Badass and Ray Vaughn and then somehow it became a triple with this dude named Daylight and this other brother named Reason. These were some really really

See. That's the thing about crime statistics.

But before I get into crime statistics, I need to talk about the concept of crime.

Period.

This will be no surprise to y'all because you listen to Cools on media.

Crime is made up.

Now, criminal crime, I think it's very important to understand that it is a social construct. Now what do I mean by that? But on me is it's situational? Right, How the same act can mean two different things. Now, this is a conceptual thing that obviously our felt experience is a little more real.

But let me give you an example.

Let a disaster hit, a hurricane, an earthquake, a flood. If I go into that grocery store and get some bread, am I looting or scavenging? Am I stealing or surviving. And the answer is depends on what color you are. Crime is a social construct. Because if that's the case, how is George Zimmerman still walking? Having said that, one could take this argument and go super bonkers on it and say the same thing about pedophilia, Like, who's to say that what Epstein did is a crime? Because, like

We need to have some sort of due diligence.

We have decided, as a species that is self aware that our children matter.

Their safety is important to us.

The person standing next to you has the right to exist, whether you like that person or not. They have the right to exist. You cannot hold them against they will. That's heybeas corpus, apparently unbeknownst to Christy Nole, who clearly don't know what hate be as corpus means as all the time it what is criminal and what is lawful

Hopefully, Hopefully I'll find it and put it in the show notes.

But Freeway's verse with a song with jay Z, says, we still hustle till the sun come up. Crack a forty. When the sun go down, it's a cold winter. Y'all, niggas better bundle up. I bet it's a hot summer. Grab an onion just to rock it down. You hot, Now listen up, follow me. You don't know the cops soul purposes to lock us down.

Throw away to key.

But without this drug shit, your kids ain't got no way to eat.

Huh.

We still trying to keep mom smiling because when her teeth stops showing and her stomach start growling, then the heat start flowing. If you from my hood, you know you feel me keep going, the sneaks start leaning and the heat stop working, then my heat start working.

I'm gonna rob me a person. Okay, now listen.

These are the lyrics that Little Bruh quoted in his TikTok, and the point he's making, which is the same point I'm making, is that he's talking about the solutions to crime. Like he said it right there, like I just want my mom to smile. My kids don't have any other way to eat. And then he says, when the heat stopped working, then my heat start working.

I'm gonna rob me a person. It is resources.

But again, follow what this brud trying to tell you is that you putting law enforcement in our neighborhoods doesn't fix anything. Does you follow? Does what we're saying? He's like, no, you just want to lock us up. That is not solving the problem. The problem is I'm hungry, My mama's hungry, my kids are hungry. My sneaks start leaning. What he's talking about is this tennis shoes as sneakers, they're leaning.

Now, are there other options?

Maybe, But if you gonna do the math, listen, this is simple economics. If you want to make one thousand dollars tonight because the rents do tomorrow, you go over to Spanish Jose's house. Spanish Jose say, hey, listen, you ain't got to do nothing. Just put this bag in your back seat and drive the park slope, drop it off a comeback. Or you can go work twenty dollars an hour at McDonald's. Ain't no uncles with endowments and

So what you want? What the fuck you want me to do?

Now here's the premise of what I'm talking about, which is, we know the solutions.

It's never been about crime.

Okay, but let me talk about some folks, some black folks who do care about the solution, who do care about crime, Because if we're talking about crime in our urban areas, who the fuck do you think the crimes are against and see that's the part that makes me so mad.

When I be talking to these people.

You think we don't care because who are these crimes getting carried out against.

You think we happy to see all them police.

One would think if it worked, we would be happy to see all these police in our streets.

But you know what, the shit don't help.

Okay, what I'm gonna do in the rest of this show is prove to y'all, based on decades of research, what does reduce crime.

We're gonna link all the things in the bio.

I knew I had to come my a game if I'm going on the cap and Year, because these some of the smartest people like y'all. Listen, the people on this show, y'all. Y'all is like real journalists. I'm just a rapper that knows how to explain shit. So I needed to make sure that I had my ducks in a row. So I'm about to show y'all a trillion examples of where if you really from these blocks, if you really do care about the welfare of black people,

Your crime is we just don't like you around.

At the end of the day, all these laws against trans people is really just because you just think they gross. And so with us, it was just like you, like, what is redlining, discriminatory practices in jobs?

You just don't want us around. What is white flight? You just don't want us around?

And your justification of this is this made up ass word name crime and that you care that crime matter. But Nikki, you don't. Okay, I'm getting getting ahead of myself. Let's take a break. All right, here we go. I've calmed down. So the first thing you want to think about is how crime is reported, right in the ways for which it's reported, and then the geographical locations that

Now do you.

Think it's thugs sitting on the National Monument sipping forty ounces?

No, you out there with the tourists sipping macha.

So in one sense is when you say crime has dropped thirty percent, it's like thirty percent since when?

Okay?

And is it averaged across all of DC or are you talking about in its areas where things like carjackings, homicides and stuff like that happen right now? Remember what I talked about a long time ago, at least on my show. Hopefully y'all remember this that the crime rates in America is always a weird situation because we don't live in America. You live in your city, so maybe it is going crazy in your own local neighborhoods, so

I don't know.

What I'm trying to say is sometimes the statistics can be deceiving. Now Granny and them who you know, bought their house a long time ago. They see the graffiti on the wall and they think, you know, YadA YadA, the boys like loitering outside. How do you fix it? Well, allow me to introduce it to Philadelphia, which coincidentally is where Freeway is from.

So the data is pretty clear, you know.

If you look at the Violent Crime Reduction Report, it's literally it's at the Department of Justice.

You can read it yourself.

It tells you exactly what has worked to drop homicide, violent crime, carjacking, theft.

It tells you what has worked what has not worked. A simple google right.

And the intro of this is this is a violent crime reduction between twenty twenty one and twenty twenty five, and it says for the past three years, the Justice Department has been executing comprehensive strategies to reduce violent crime rooted in local communities, and we're seeing trends in the

Now.

One thing was, well, we were in a pandemic, so there's that, right. Another thing is it's almost like how everybody was complaining again that crime was up. It is like y'all forgot the nineties existed, like I'd lived it, and baby, this ain't nothing, you know, the actual fear of pain and suffering. This pales in comparison we live in a great place in relation to what we went through in the eighties and nineties. Now again we're talking national trends right again in your local neighborhood.

It may be a green light afvenent. I don't know. I'm just saying for you to.

Say that our country's becoming a cesspool means you not reading the data. According to the Conversation, it's like independent journalist. This author, her name is Katerina g Roman. She's a professor of criminal justice at Temple University and as a side note, at Temple University, Mahomie Timothy, he's teaching a class on Kendrick.

Lamar and his lyrics and hip hop and justice.

I actually spoke at his class a couple of times, so that was pretty dope to hear what he's doing.

But now check this out.

According to her writing, it says that the Pennsylvania spends roughly two hundred thousand dollars a year for each juvenile it incarcerates. According to the twenty twenty one report from a bipartisan Pennsylvania Juvenile Justice Track Force, that's fifty times the cost to deliver evidence based family therapy that would prevent kids from going into the justice system in the first place. I'm gonna tell you before I even read the rest of this, because I lived it. We just

Can I again, please speak from my own experience.

When you go into these juveniles cases, you have to pick a location of people that you would be You'll pretend even if you don't run with them, even if you don't know them niggas outside of here. When y'all get outside, y'all may never have talked again. But in here, even if you went in there over some stupid like shoplift and some damn spray paint, whatever the case may be, you now got to run with the people that got your same skin tone and are from your part of town.

Where you're gonna go.

If I just happen to live on sixtieth Street next to my uncle, I just live here. You mess around, go visit your granny house and then got a report to your PO. You've been fragnized with known gang members. You're probably going back. The shit don't work, y'all. But what does now?

Again?

Back to this article, drawing from about thirty five years of work in Philadelphia and other cities to understand what makes neighborhoods safe for I believe the surist returns home from prevention strategies aimed at young people who are not yet immersed in robbery, shootings and gun activities. So they

This person that wrote the article.

Students who have been involved in fights or show other risk factors of violence and street gang involvements are referred to this pro The initiative's core idea is simple, earn students trust through consistent, credible mentorship, and step in when needy. Stepping in means teaching conflict resolution skills, running engaging workshops, buying a meal, intervening when a fight is brewing or

Listen. One of the things even.

In my own house, my own life, was I knew my neighbors and my neighbors knew me, and if they call me outside standing with the wrong people, I knew they was gonna tell mama. Sometimes, since they're teenagers, they don't have conflict resolution skills. All they know is to pop off. You ever been angry, You don't think kids be angry. Your teacher in there asking you about your algebra homework, your stomach rumbling. I ain't got shit to say to her because I'm hungry. And sometimes it's just

I taught a kid.

I've said this story so many times, who used to show up late in class? When I used to teach, you show up late in class maybe three to four times a week, always had his homework in his hand. You've tarty that many times were supposed to call a truancy officer. Ain't no way in the world I'm calling a truancy officer because that mean they Mama gonna have to pay a twenty five hundred dollar fee number one

And this is just the time I get here. I never marked him.

Thwarty, since all you do is ask, right, which leads me to the second thing, the power of credible caring adults.

It's real simple. You got people that care, you got food programs. All right, let me nerd it up again.

Now.

According to the Youth Justice Services, Relationships, Rehabilitation, and the Reality of Young People Involved a metasynthesis of qualitative literature. This is a scholarly literature review dude results that says that just having an adult who you know cares, just having one that cared, changes significantly the chances of a student getting into a life of crime.

But just knowing somebody care.

I'm going to link in it again into these show notes, all of the data, all the stuff I've been looking at, so you can check it out yourself. I know, it seems like a gross oversimplification by the way that I'm just saying it right now.

Usually you know what I'm saying. We was doing the it can happen here thing.

I gotta be able to read this stuff out to you, but I can read a part of it.

It says that that the themes.

That broke out after interviewing one hundred and fifty kids is that young people reported first being pessimistic about entering these services, and their past experiences impacted their ability to trust and were initially.

Cautious of professionals. But watch this.

These were the themes and sub themes they felt valued and finding worth within their system. The reciprocal nature of understanding and respect these kids felt respected, the importance of having one good person, creating a secure base for expiration and development, and then showing a genuine care by going above and beyond.

So basically, just.

Be kind and it helps a student sixsed.

Ain't that crazy?

But at the end of the day, homicides in Philadelphia at the lowest level they've been in twenty five years. How it's long time and it takes effort. But next I want to talk about who the city of Baltimore.

What is new? Mayor up there cooking? All right?

Next?

All right, we bike. Now Baltimore.

I don't know if you know this, which I love about it, and of course you probably don't know about it.

Because a black man did this.

Baltimore's homicide rate has fallen forty percent. Now, Baltimore, you understand this is where the wire took place. Don't get me wrong about Baltimore. Baltimore active murder capital of a dog. Oh listen, Baltimore was active now. According to the Guardian, violent crime in America's big cities has been receiving since the pandemic for about two years, but even in comparisons

Hundred and sixty five dead.

Assuming the city remains at this pace, the murder rate will finish below thirty per ten thousand residents for the first time since nineteen eighty six. If it remains on pace since the first of January, it would have finished twenty twenty five at one hundred and forty three murders, a rate of about twenty five per one hundred thousand, the last scene in Baltimore since nineteen seventy eight.

Now check this out.

Y'all may not remember this, but y'all remember Freddie Gray, the boy that got killed in the back of the police holding tank.

See, that's what happens when you just bring into a place.

It ain't about the crime though, back to the Guardian, since twenty fifteen, there has been here in Baltimore, this acknowledgment that the equity needs to be the priority.

Right.

Mayor Brown said the riots were as much about the conditions of poverty as it was about Gray's death. I hope you hearing that people losing their homes and foreclosures to water bills, for example, as they were about police brutality. But the heavy handed response to the cops to the protests, failed to hold the police accountable for misconduct, right, viscerating the relationship between the Baltimore police and the public. Baltimore State Attorney Marion Moseley laid murder.

Charges on the officers.

Involved in Baltimore's police union, closed ranks and response, eviscerating the relationship between the police and politicians, and serious scandals at the city Hall and the state's attorney offers, and the failure of Moseley's charges to result in convictions.

Violence skyrocket.

Here come this young brother, Brandon Scott, young black man. Right, he's a former city council member. Right, he's been a long observer of the violence, you know what I'm saying. And before he became the mayor in twenty twenty, then he implemented what he's calling a comprehensive three pillar approach.

Right.

The first pillar is called public health approach to violence. Right.

The second pillar is community engagement and interagency coordination.

Right. The third pillar is evaluation and accountability.

Right.

So, like I said in the beginning, it starts with the community, all right. So check this out again from The Guardian against Baltimore's police budget topping a half a billion dollars, the largest police budget per capital of any large city in the USA. The political establishment gave its new millennial mayor room to experiment with fifty million dollars

He ain't just keeping for them.

Now here's the thing cuts my mouth to say it, But if you are going to stop violence in the situation that we live in, the cops got to be involved. Because most of the time, the cops are the problem. It's always punishment in prison with them. They only come with a stick when something already happened. So you got to get them on the table, and you got to get them at the table with somebody that's gonna be willing to be held accountable.

And remember that's pillar three.

Now now far being for me because I don't live in Baltimore.

Would I ever shill for no mayor like this.

I'm just telling you what the data say is and I got family in Baltimore. Now, what Scott said is again we focus on the individuals and groups that are most likely to be the victim or perpetuator of violence.

We go to them. Listen, they knock on doors.

There's a social worker that comes to the door with a letter from the mayor that says, yo, you're trying to be a part of this, and they're only targeting kids, are families that they know got low poverty rates and high chances of crime. You looking for the people who are most likely gonna fall a victim, to perpetuating it or receive you get because remember how we started this whole thing before you think we don't care about crime,

Do you understand the piece I would have felt hit.

I known that since I wasn't involved in none of this shit, they may not be coming up to me. You've already calmed my nervous system down right. There's another story about a young man who was recovering after a gunshot and in this life coach Nigga from a youth advocate program approached him and Jalen said, this is This man said, he just had been in the wrong part of West Baltimore at the wrong time. Now, most of

He said, I thought there was a catch.

I thought I'd have to pay them back in the future, because when the police do it to you, that's exactly what it is.

You got to pay them back later.

But this person is funded by the city to just be a life coach, I ain't asking you to snitch on nobody. I ain't asking you to make yourself put yourself in danger. Outside is somebody who understands what it's like to live out here. This life coach says, it's about follow up. Today, they might say get the fuck out of here tomorrow. They might be wanting some services. It might be something tragic that happens and they need change. Like I said, my mother's not smiling no more. I

That is pillar three. I'm gonna link all this stuff to you.

There's a four year evaluation, and you will get fucking fired. If I know that if you treat me right, something gonna happen to you. I might think a little. Listen, the heat stopped working, so my heat start working. But if my stomach is full, and the bills are paid, and there's after school programs that go to and I know these old people around me are gonna trust me

This is not ideal.

You would never see me shill for no police department or mayor, but cities like Philly in Baltimore are proven. Nigga, if you just care and you spend money on trusted sources and provide resources, the crime it drops itself. Seems so simple. But you know what do we know? We're just black people and all this tells me what we already knew. It was never about crime, ever, because there's research that shows what actually works in reducing crime.

What this about? You just think we're you and you're a white supremacist.

You just want a white world and you think it's cool to have military in our streets.

Don't get me wrong, you didn't invent that. You was in Trump.

You know how I know you ain't invent that because there's an amendment in the Constitution.

That says that we don't want to.

Live in a world where the military is on every corner, but apparently you do.

It's clearly not about crime.

Welcome to it could happen here a podcast about a world on fire and how to put it out. I'm your host, Nia Wong. The world is fucked. It's the one thing everyone agrees on in the vacuum of a defeated Democratic Party and a hideously unpopular fascist takeover that is nevertheless on the march ideologies VI for the mantle of resistance to the fascist purge, Sir on mom Donnie's victory in New York represents a resurgent social democracy in

Wait what?

This conference is also sponsored by the Koch Families organizations Stand Together. It includes speakers from the American Enterprise Institute, one of the co sponsors of the event, did another conference with special guest Kevin Roberts, the guy who wrote Project twenty twenty five. Isn't this supposed to be a liberal movement?

Oh no, what's coming here?

Can Abundance really be funded by all these right wing billionaires and tech fascists? Oh no, as you may have guessed from the title, most of today's episode is going to be about what the people behind Abundance actually want, and it's not what you or I want. It is what Peter Teal wants, what Mark Andrieson wants, what jd Vance wants. In a sense, it is what Donald Trump wants.

Do with abundance?

Long long ago, in a galaxy far far away, I explained rent on this show, and this is specifically here rent in the context of what you pay to your landlords. I promise this will circle back to this will circle back to sort of abundance the mbeism.

In a second I.

Attempted to explain rent by drawing on the work of the legendary Venezuelan anthropologist Fernando corneal To argue that the rent that we paid to our landlords functions similarly to oil rent. Reprice is not set by supply and demand, but instead by the social power of oil producers. Now people got very, very mad at me for this, but the long derier of history has vindicated me. In the

Quote.

Real Page acknowledged that its software is aimed at maximizing prices for landlords, referring to its products as quote driving every possible opportunity to increase price, avoiding the race to the bottom in down markets, and quote a rising tide raises all ships. A Real Page executive observed that its products help landlords avoid competing on the merits, noting quote there is a greater good in everybody succeeding versus essentially trying to compete against one another in a way that

What does that.

Sound like, Oh, it sounds like Real Pages price fixing algorithm. Why does it sound like Real Pages price fixing algorithm. It's because in the real world, markets are not neutral institutions that operate according to neutral laws. Their institutions created and enforced by the state. Landlords can check up your rent because they wield collective power together and have the ability to use the state to drag you out of

To do this.

Now, these people have a bunch of absolutely hideous beliefs. We're not even going to get in to the eugenics here, but like these the people funding this thing are huge eugenesis. We literally do not have time to do all of the eugenic shit associated with this, because if I were to actually do the eugenic I mean we talked about some of like Mattie and gleciass bullshit on this podcast earlier, but like if I actually went through and did this,

But yeah, for.

Now, here are these ads hopefully are not eugenics.

Woo.

So let's get back to who I think are really the two primary villains of this story, and that is Peter Theal and Mark Entrieson, who are two of the most dangerous people in the entire world. Teal and Reason are fascists who believe the state should be a corporation run by the tech elite. They do not believe in democracy, and particularly thel has said that democracy is the enemy of freedom.

Right.

When these people talk about running the state like a business, they mean that there should be an unaccountable fucking philosopher CEO king, and that there shouldn't be democracy. A common feature of this, and you know, the physical manifestation of this thing is an idea called the network state, and a very common theme of the founders of Abundance is their support for the network state, both as a concept and in terms of building them. So what is the

Welcome to it could happen here a show about things falling apart. One such thing frequently falling apart is any notion of privacy or digital privacy. Ever, encroaching surveillance is one of the biggest global issues affecting free expression and a free press, both directly through surveillance technology but also

My name is Cooper Clinton.

I am a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

There I do a lot of different things.

Most specifically for the purposes of this talk, I do malware research on malware that targets activists, journalists, and civil society. So Graphite is a type of spyware that is able to read your messages from your phone the same way that you or you know, maybe a cop could if they had physical access to your unlocked phone, right.

That is the main capability that it has.

According to the reporting published by Citizen Lab, its main job is to hook into WhatsApp and into other encrypted chat apps and just read the messages in those apps, like in the messages you've already sent and any future messages that you send.

That's really it's the that's the meat of Graphite.

Something that sets paragone apart from their fellow is ray Le competitors is that Paragon has marketed itself as the ethical choice for spyware. One of their early investors in Israeli firm called Red Dot wrote quote Paragon builds best in class cyber intelligence software to empower democratic countries, providing

This is actually less full featured than other spyware we've seen in the past, like NSL groups, Pegasus spyware. Other types of spyware that I've seen tend to have a lot more capabilities. Right, they have the capability of like turning on GPS location tracking, the capability to turn on a hot.

Mic, to do all these other things.

And this seems as far as as far as Citizen Lab has reported to not be present within the graphie maware and I think this is because Paragon has presented themselves as kind of being the quote unquote responsible malware manufacturer rate and they're like like trying to minimize the amount of data they collect. It doesn't mean they couldn't add this stuff in the future, but that's the gist of it. It's actually, you know, kind of a very

A lot of reporting and discussion of graphite and Paragon frame it as an equivalent to nsoss by where Pegasus, which has been banned in the United States for four years.

I think a lot of people are doing the work for these companies that are aligning themselves with fascism, right, And I don't think it's a great trend actually, Right, Like people are assuming that you know, Palenteer is sort of watching everything, right, and it really Palenteer is just like fancy visual graphing software essentially, right, Like the danger of Palenteer is combining these two government databases, right, this malware the GRAPHI maware, right, Like, yeah, it's it's not good,

Well, now we're talking now, now that's a good app.

If only, if only tech bros could solve such social problems.

No, no, they would never no.

But yeah, you know it's not it's not a magical right, and we don't need to do their work for them, right, We don't need to do their myth making for them.

Right.

A bigger threat to the majority.

Of people in the US is getting your phone seized by the cops.

Right, totally.

There's nothing this maur can do, according to public reports, at least that the cops can't do if they get hold of your unlocked phone.

Right. Having faced idea or fordit pass code is much more dangerous to your digital security. Yes, as an average person, even as it like an anaged person, like going to a protest.

Yes, yes, absolutely absolutely.

You know, Celebrate, which is the machine that police plug your phone into to make a copy of all the data on it, is much more dangerous to the.

Average American than the paragont is. They're much more likely to encounter that.

This is more of a niche gripe, but one that's still important. There's been claims that quote ice can now hack any phone and break encryption, but graphite doesn't actually a quote unquote break encryption. It's not going after the encryption on Signal or WhatsApp. Instead, Paragon tries to circumvent end to end encryption by trying to gain access to content on a target device once it's been unencrypted by

The other thing that I think is missing a lot from the conversation about Graphite in particular.

Is that the malware is just the program.

That runs when it gets on your phone, and first before they can install Graphite, they have to get onto your phone through some sort of exploit. If your phone is up to date and fully patched, this will have to be as zero day exploit, which means it's an exploit that has had zero days for Apple or Google or whoever to fix it because it is unknown to them.

Welcome back. I'd like to get into a little bit of Paragon's backstory and how they've grown as a company. Farragon was founded in twenty nineteen by former Israeli Prime Minister A hood Brock and A hood Schnorsen, a former commander of the IDF's cyber warfare unit, basically Israel's equivalent of the NSA called Unit eight two hundred three. Other Paragon co founders are also ex Israeli intelligence. The startup got early financing from a Tel Aviv investment fund called

For sure, ninety people is a lot of people for such a targeted attack, although it's you know, in terms of most malware, like most commercial maer, ninety people would be a very very small attack, right, Like it wouldn't be worth your time.

So, you know, it depends on the scale of things.

I don't know what the scale of Italian civil society is, right, but ninety people is likely, I think a small fraction of the whole of Italian civil society.

Right.

But yeah, those so those people that were targeted by Paragon.

The ones that we know about.

You know, one was a Italian anti fascist journalist, right, I think another there were a couple of other journalists that were covering migration issues, and you know, just a sort of a large swath across Italian civil society. So the way they were targeted was on WhatsApp. They were added to a group and then they were sent a malicious PDF which they didn't even have to open, and they didn't have to approve being added to the group.

Interesting, right in this case.

Yeah, it's possible that in the future Paragon will find a way to make graphite persistent. But it does make it more stealthy, It makes it harder to detect, it makes it harder to forensically analyze. For people like citizen Lab and like eff if it just runs in them sure, right, so it kind of makes sense that they would want to keep running it in memory, even though rebooting it would clear out the infection because you can just reinfect the person.

Even like like developers like WhatsApp or like Apple might have a harder time, like yeah, realizing that they've been attacked. If it can get cleared out so quickly, I guess.

Yeah, absolutely absolutely, And in this case WhatsApp, they'd realized they had been attacked, they quickly figured out the pattern, and you know, to their credit, warned everybody immediately. Often, the only way I think people will find out they've been you know, infected by this spywere is if WhatsApp or you know, somebody else maybe Apple warned you. That's not great, but it is, but it is better than the alternative where they just don't warn you at all.

Right after the targets were notified of the spyware attack, some including journalists and migrant refugee activists in Italy, agreed to participate in a forensic analysis of Graphite by citizen Lab. They found that Paragon spyware had spread from one to at least two other apps on the device. In April of twenty twenty five, we got forensic confirmation of Graphite spyware on iPhone with a zero click exploit attacking I message.

My reading is that rebooting it would remove.

The malware from your phone until you were re exploit, which so you know, if you just reboot and you don't update, or you know, the zero day isn't out yet, right, they're just going to run the exploit again.

Right.

I think it's a fair bet that they're just going to run the exploit again, But it would be.

Enough to get it off for that time, right, And I mean, I think as far as the mitigations, my friend recommends that people like reboot their phone every every morning when they're brushing their teeth, right, and I don't think it's a bad bit of security hygiene.

If these guys are going dude, in fact.

You might as well make it, you know, more of a headache for them, right, You might as well make it more costly to them, because there is going to be a charge to them for each time they have to reinfect you.

Right.

But yeah, it's certainly I think overblown to say that. You know, once it's on your phone, it's on your phone forever. There's you know, you just got to, you know.

Throw your a thousand dollars phone in the trash and go buy another one.

Like, no, you can, you know, if you don't feel safe, just rebooting it, right, like a factory reset, that would be the next step, right, I think that would That would most likely get rid.

Of any persistence mechanisms that were installed.

I'm not familiar with any iOS mawer certainly that would survive a factory reset.

But probably the most important thing besides using signal is to keep your phone software updated. That's the simplest and best way to make it harder for spyware like graphites to make it onto your phone in the first place. Out Of date software has many more known vulnerabilities to attack. For extra protection, enable lockdown mode on iPhone or Advanced Protection on Android.

So the reason it's important to keep your phone up to date and always install the latest security updates, even if it's a pain in the ass, and I know it's a pain in the ass, is because this makes an attacker have to use zero day exploits. So, if you have an old version of the software on your phone, there are known exploits. Known exploits are you know, more or less free?

Right? They are already out there, they are already burned. They do not matter, right, like the company already knows about them.

An exploit loses basically all of its value as soon as you know the company knows about it and it's patched.

Right, So if you.

Have out of date software on your phone, if you have out of data software in a computer, it changes the entire economics of attacking. Right, It's basically free for me to exploit your phone at this point, and I you know, I will exploit it as many times as I want, and I don't care if that exploit is burned. I don't care if you find it, because again it's free, right.

This has been giving me real problems lately. Zero a exploits, meaning exploits that the manufacturer does not know about and has not had a chance to patch, cost millions of dollars for these platforms, and a zero click exploit where where the victim doesn't have to interact with it at all. Right, I don't have to click a link, I don't have to do something.

You just send me, you know, a PDF, an infected PDF or a magic file, right or something, and my phone is infected.

Those are the most expensive above all, Right, those.

Those are sort of the Those are the golden ticket for malware companies, right a million, These cost million dollars And if you burn it, right, if it gets caught, like like you know what happened with WhatsApp and citizen lab in Italy, right, that's millions of dollars.

Down the drain for para con.

You know, they're going to pass that on to the Italian government to ice to whoever their contractors are. Right, So keeping your front up today totally changes the economics of running a malware attack against you, right, like anybody can run, you know, out of their office old you know, end day, right more than zero day malware attacks against any me, right Like, those are cheap. But if your stuff is patched, no, it's gonna it's it's It totally

All these tips can make it considerably harder and more importantly, extremely expensive for this spy work to get onto your device. These exploits could only be deployed against individual targets, and that gets quite expensive. Just because ICE could theoretically hack your phone, that doesn't mean that your phone is necessarily at a high risk of being hacked by ICE. Who are the possible targets for graphites bywear Who is at

Like is this here like your.

Local like you know, food not bombs organizer, or like an immigration lawyer?

Like? Right?

Who should be concerned? I guess and and take take this threat like more seriously?

Definitely, I think people who should be concerned are I mean, you hit the nail on the head, right. The people that should be concerned about this are people who have you know, been a special pain in.

The ass for ICE and basic heure.

Right, you know, people who might be under HSI investigation. Right, people who you know have been threatened by the president or by Pam Bondi you know specifically, right, like had their name called out specifically, right, People who are you know, very loud, very active, right, like the sort of leaders what's the term tall poppies?

Right?

Like the people that are really have their heads sticking out right in a way that's like very public and very well known. If you have risen to the level where like Calm Homan knows your name personally, right, that makes it a pretty good chance that you know, you might become a target with this, right, Like that's that's who we're talking about.

Well, and like as we've seen in Italy, like that can that can include like like anti fascist journalists, Yeah, definitely, people who work for like migrant human rights organizations, yes, high profile activists. And I think like there's a real concern with with you know, trying to comprise the phone of journalists because of how journalists like talk to sources.

This, absolutely, and I want to especially single out lockdown mode there, Like, we are not aware of any infections of anymour right, Pegasus, Graphite Right, any others that have managed to successfully infect an iPhone on lockdown mode. So if you are worried about this, lockdown mode is the single most effective thing you can do to protect yourself against this mour right, is go turn on lockdown mod.

If you're on Android.

I think Google calls it advanced protection mode.

Yeah, yeah, advanced protection mode.

So advanced Protection mode used to be not very comprehensive, and I think like with the new Android update with Android sixteen that came out, you know, I think like last week or something, it's now much more comparable to lockdown mode. So you know, I highly recommend churning that on if you're on Android.

All my homies love lockdown mode.

Yes, yes, that is the number one protection right.

The other The other thing I strongly recommend always and I be this drum like every day is turn on disappearing messages. If you're on Signal or WhatsApp, go turn on disappearing messages, right because this is good against you know a lot of different things, right, Like this is good against celebrate as well as pigass, as well as grab me. Right, Like if the messages are gone by the time you get infected, there's no way to recover those, right,

Ten years whatever?

Right?

Never never delete? Right, And that's don't ignore them, ignore Google. Google doesn't want you to delete things because they want to use all that data for selling you ads.

Right, delete everything.

I want more underwater data set.

Yes, yes, exactly, delete everything. Delete your files, you know, like, get rid of those old group chats, right, get rid of those old chats that you don't need anymore.

You need to be like that lawyer in death notes. Delete yes, delete.

The death note referenced.

Do you wanna plug Citizen Labs slash EFF and tell people where to find both your work and then also other people who are doing research into graphite And like, you know, if you've been suspected of being targeted by you know, maybe a notification how you can participate in forensic analysis to help everyone be more secure against this in the future.

Yeah, for sure.

So one of the best ways to find out you've been targeted by state sponsor malware is to get a notification from Apple or Google or WhatsApp or some other large company that you have been targeted by state sponsored malware. Typically, these notifications don't contain much more information than we believe you've been targeted by a nation of state or by

Help figure out what's going on.

Right, Like this is this is the number one indicator, right because like this malware is usually fairly stealthy, right, Like it's not actually, but you know, I don't know flashing you're infected on your screen, right, But yeah, citizen Lab is always doing amazing work. I'm a fellow there, so I get to work with them sometimes, which is

Er erm, I have citizen Lab dot c A. Oh, but I'm Canadian.

You are probably correct. I can never remember.

The as a Canadian. I was very I was very put off by you erasing our nation's history, of our of our coveted dot c A. We love, we love our dot c A.

I am not trying to start a war with Canada.

Uh well, many many people are, so.

Listen, I'm firmly on the side of Canada and the war against Canada. Okay, please take me in lease.

Yeah, your solidarity is a is a noted So citizen lab dot.

Org actually redirection cism Lab dot c So we were both right there you go, or you were maybe more right.

So yeah, citizen Law and yeah, they're they're really fantastic, A lot of really good research going on there at e FF dot org, the Electronic Frontier Foundation where US based nonprofit been around for thirty five years defending civil liberties as they intersect with technology. So a lot of a lot of free speech work, a lot of you know, privacy and Fourth Amendment work. And we also have a really excellent set of guides called the Surveillance Self Defense Guides, which are at SSD dot e FF dot.

Org, which I highly recommend people go and check out.

It's the most sort of evergreen guide for defending yourself online. A lot of the problem with the online security guides that they get out of date very quickly, and we have a totally whole, full time person dedicated to making sure that our guides stay up to date.

I'll put a link in the description.

Yeah, and we're a nonprofit.

Members support a nonprofit, so you know, if you like to work, throw us a few bucks. We work for tips and yeah. Are the chief places that I'm at that I want to plug? Only other thing to plug? I guess you can follow me on social media. I'm at cooperq dot com on blue Sky and cooper q at Masto dot hackers dot town on Mastodon.

Hell yeah, yeah, all right, well, thank you so much. Thank you for the work you do at a e FF and Citizen Lab.

Thank you.

Yeah. I guess we should alwas throw away our phone since there's no way to use our phone safely anymore.

I mean, throwing away our phones isn't a terrible idea.

That's why I bad. You know what I could be onto something I.

Think for our own sanity just in general.

No, I think they're making us more connected, and I think they're making us more stable.

They are making us more connected, that's for sure. In that I get five billion notifications per day, if that's what connected means.

Yeah, all right.

Hello everyone, and welcome to say it could happen here. My name is Dan el Kerd. I'm a writer, analyst, and researcher of Palestinian and Arab politics. I'm an associate professor of political science and a senior non resident fellow at the Arab Center Washington. What a wild time in the Middle East? Am I right? I mean not to be flippant, that's putting it mildly. Today before I recorded, Israel bombed the capital of Katar, Doha, in an assassination

Back to that one.

For all these countries, they say that they are recognizing Palestine as a state because they desire a two state solution. Their condition for recognizing Palestine as a state also includes Hamas being completely out of the picture quote demilitarized in the language of French President Macron, as NPR reported back in August first, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Karney also said that the Palestinian authority needs to hold elections in this scenario,

But the thing is a one.

Hundred and forty five countries already recognize Palestine as a state. Palestine was given observer status at the UN in twenty twelve, and the Palestinian authority has been working for quite some time to get more recognition internationally and to be able to use the international legal system to advocate for themselves.

End quote.

Nevertheless, the Osclo Accords of nineteen ninety three are widely understood to be the attempt to bring about a two state solution of some kind, and it's been the framework that many international powers have paid lip service to ever since. By the way, September twenty twenty three marked the thirty year anniversary of the accords, we all know what happened October seventh, just a few days later. The thing is,

Quote.

The greatest promise of this renewed statehood bid, the most recent push being in twenty eleven twenty twelve, is a united front to challenge US and transigent support for Israel end quote. However, they also point out that quote states do not need to recognize Palestine to end the occupation,

Sovereignty has always.

Been what the demand is and these pushes for recognition miss that point. Yet again. That's it for me. Thank you for listening to another Palestine episode, and I'll be back with more soon.

Take care.

This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what is happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis today I'm joined by Sophie Lecterman, Robert Evans, and James Stout. This episode, we are covering the week of September fourth to September eleven events.

Never wait, remember what, never forget, whichever one of those were supposed to do.

So we had a very big news week already, and then a very big piece of news happened yesterday when we usually record Executive Disorder, but this is Thursday. We waited a little bit to get some more information before we talk about this story, which will probably be the biggest story of the week, the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

So on Wednesday, September tenth, at Utah Valley University at around twelve twenty three pm Mountain time, Charlie kirk was shot during a campus event. It was a big outdoor event. The crowd, I mean, there's some good footage of elevation of the size of the crowd it was. It looked like several thousand people who had shown up to I think it did all. It seemed like largely supporters, but

Perhaps the satellite estimation right.

Right, But that does seem credible based on what I've seen, about one hundred and fifty yards or so, Yeah, which is not long range. That's not like short range. It's like low medium range for a rifle. And they found, or at least the FBI is saying they found the rifle, and the pictures show it to be an extremely normal looking bolt action hunting rifle. Kirk was shot once in

Yeah, and his case of family were present I think at the at the event.

I mean, I'm sure some of them, but there's yeah, like not ever like they would have probably wanted, Like I doubt his parents or whatever were all there or whatever, like even if his wife and kids were sure.

Yeah, totally makes sense.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, those are the facts that we can verify. And there's actually fairly little besides this other than some time stuff that we can verify perfectly. Like they're currently saying that about eleven fifty two am Mountain time the shooter arrived near campus, because they do have some videos

The first guy started shouting after the shooting and I'll do it again, and this prompted him to be detained, but was later found to not be a legitimate suspect in the shooting.

No, because he was right next to the shooting. Yeah, had no weapon, nothing. So I mean, those are the facts as they stand right now. The photo that has been released of the guy they think did it looks like about eighty percent of the male population of Utah clean shaven, but otherwise he looked just as nondescriptives like this dude takes his hat off, maybe shaves his head like it would not be wildly difficult for him to hide because he does not look like.

Pretty greeny pictures not as clear as something like the healthcare CEO shooting.

Yeah, and the FBI did offer a reward of up to one hundred thousand dollars for information.

We do know that, Yeah, which points towards the usefulness of the tips they have been getting so far. Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah, the rightfle is for anyone interested. It looks they thought it was a mauser.

I guess it didn't look like one from the photos that they released, but maybe that maybe that was yet again, not the gun, because the FBI has said a lot of things and then backtracked on it.

Yeah, the New York Post has a picture of a sporterized Spanish mouser with a composite stock.

Have you seen that one, Robert.

Yes, that's the one I saw that. It looked like a savage to me. But is that is that a sportized eight millimeter that was rebarrel the thirty eight six?

That would be my guess.

The Spanish mousers the only one I'm aware of that has the bolt turned down in that way. Good idea, but that it's not a great picture. It could also be something else.

Because it just looked like any hunting rifle on a store rack the photo that I saw.

Yeah, Yeah, No, I think it's someone has done a sported job on it.

Yeah.

What's somewhat interesting about that, like, other than just being adweeb, is that potentially one could acquire a gun like that without having filled out forty four to seventy three form right like an FBI background check. I know they will if they have the weapon, they will certainly be pursuing trying to trace that as one of the ways they're

No, and you don't have to do a background check. I mean, face to face sales are I believe legal in Utah. Yes, private, face to face sales are legal in Utah.

Okay.

So if this guy bought Basically, what that means is if this guy just bought a gun in cash from a dude, there's not a record of that, although said dude might come forward.

Sure.

That said, the fact that this is a sportized old mouser means this could be a gun that's put in the family a while that he's sportalized, in which case there's absolutely no record of it.

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely, I'm guessing.

I've seen people call it a high powered rifle and stuff like, just just be aware it's kind of an old gun.

It's an old gun.

I mean, if it's thirty, If it is thirty at six, I would say that's a high power cartridge.

No it is.

That's a big round.

But yeah, it's a full size rifle cartridge for sure.

People hunt deer with thirty at six all the time. It's an extremely normal hunting rifle.

Yeah, like probably top five most common kinds of rifle for someone to have in this country.

And that was bolt action hunting rifle was my assumption as soon as I saw the video, because the guy fired one shot, and it's relatively uncommon for people who are shooting in mass crowded public situations like this to limit themselves to a single round, which it just suggests number one, like a bolt action, which I also thought

Professional could have done this.

This trump distracting from Epstein. This was the massage that this was any number of unhinged theories around this event.

And I will say right now as pertains the competence of the shooter, anyone who had picked up a gun for the first time couldn't have easily done this. Like I doubt this as someone who was new to firearms, but anyone who like shot a deer once or twice a year could have made this happen. Anybody who went to the range, you know, once or twice a month for a while, could have gotten competent enough to make a shot like this very easily.

Very doable for like hobbyist shooters, which there are many of in the United States, and any other in Utah.

I would be shocked if like less than about eighty percent of the adult male population of Utah could have made this shot.

Right.

You do not need like military training, You do not need to be a veteran to make this shot.

Absolutely not.

And I think it's very irresponsible to see so many people, like including people who had journalists Spec eighteen like that. Like, I know that generally firearms are not covered well in the US media despite being ubiquitous here, but like in cases like this, it's okay no to no, but it's better to be quiet if you don't know.

Yes, the other thing I guess we should get into is in terms of the escape and what we know. This is also not something that necessitates fucking Navy seal training, right, Like, Yeah, you're a white, clean cut guy in fucking Salt Lake City. If you have a bag that you can hide your gun in and you get down, maybe throw on a different jacket or something like that over your shirt or change shirts, walk away, get to your car, drive off. Very hard for them to track you. Salt Lake City's

And Charlie's own security tends to stay close to him at the event. They're not set up with giant perimeters.

No, because none of them expected something like this.

Yeah, I'm sure that Charlie Kirk has received threats before, But yes, I mean, there's only so much a private individual can do.

Right In these situations, he often wears a bulletproof vest.

Yes, a really Yeah.

Yeah, there's only so much a private individual can do, And there's only so much you can do if you're holding an event outside, Yeah, like to stop somebody who's got us a scoped rifle from getting on top of a roof, right Like. I'm sure his family is firing their current security right now, obviously, But I really don't know what they could have done, like what his personal security could realistically have done, other than say, don't do an event outside, Charlie.

Yeah.

A few other notes that we should touch on. On Thursday morning, some unverified information related to the ongoing investigation notes leaked online through fellow campus to be Stephen Crowder. Stephen Crowder shared an internal memo which contained unverified information, which reads in part quote atf another law enforcement located an older model imported Mouser thirty odd six caliber bolt action rifle wrapped in a towel in a wooded area near the campus. The location of the fire room appears

Yes and again.

When that person with the pellet rifle was arrested, Cash Betel, director of the FBI, posted on Twitter, we have the man who killed Charlie Kirk. And then had to post like an hour later. Nope, which is not a thing you saw with previous directors of the FBI. For a good reason.

Yeah, like that their handling of this has been pretty unorphodox.

No, And I can see why a fucking Stephen Crowder fan in the ATF would want to get that out immediately totally actually, because he probably knew at some point that's going to get corrected. But what matters is it gets out for some degree of time.

Yeah, and then that bakes into the reality of a certain number of people forever.

Yeah.

Right, And that's what matters. Whether or not it's true. We don't know yet. Is it true or not?

Right? We simply don't know.

Heyesus Garrison. This is just a short update. On Thursday evening, law Enforcement gave a press conference where Utah Governor Spencer Cox cautioned against quote unquote a tremendous amount of disinformation circulating online about the killing of Charlie Kirk and specifically cited boughts from China and Russia which were encouraging violence

Oh yeah, lots of people.

Rhetoric from the right has been similarly violent, with calls to do mass violence or purge the Democrats or people on the left. I'm going to play video of the White House released late Wednesday night of Trump giving a statement on the shooting.

It's a long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree, day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible. For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and

Brings order to our country.

From the attack on my life, in Butler, Pennsylvania last year, which killed a husband and father, to the attacks on ICE agents, to the vicious murder of a healthcare executive in the streets of New York, to the shooting of House Majority leaders Steve Scalise and three others. Radical of political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.

The Trump assassin was not left wing.

Now he was a registered Republican.

There's currently no indication of the political alignment of this shooter whatsoever. Just because they killed Charlie Kirk does not mean that this was a left wing ANTIFA super soldier. Charlie Kirk has had a memafied status on the Internet for the past few years, which is encouraged vitriol and threats from those on the extreme right as well as the far left.

Yeah, he's particularly disliked by like the hardcore anti Semites on their right, and.

The Grapers have long had fun with making threats against Charlie Kirk and the quote unquote groper war, which we don't have time to get into. But it's not just Trump's worrying statement there promising a degree of crackdown. Jesse Waters on Fox has claimed quote, We're gonna avenge Charlie's death.

Yep.

Here's a clip of Jesse Waters on Fox News last night.

Trump gets hit in the ear, Charlie gets shot dead. They came after Kavanaugh with a rifle to his neighborhood. They went after Musk's cars. They just shot two Jews outside the embassy.

Think about it.

Scalice got shot, barely survived.

It's happening.

We've got transshooters, the got Riots and la They are at war with us. Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us. What are we going to do about it? How much political violence are we going to tolerate? And that's the question we're just going to have to ask ourselves now. Charlie would want us to put as much pressure on these people as possible.

Dana nailed it.

This is unacceptable and has to stop, and it has to stop now.

And everybody's accountable.

And we're watching what they're saying on television and who's saying what the politicians and the media and all these rats out there. This can never happen again. It ends now. Greg's right again. This is a turning point.

And we know which direction we're going he made a turning point.

Joe huh, Yes, that's Jesse Waters doing a turning point. Time.

Also, the use of rats to refer to other people is, I know, it's giving like radio milklan vibes.

It's also worth noting Republican Repersentative Clay Higgins from Louisiana is saying that he's seeking to have social media companies place lifetime bans on users who celebrated the assassination.

It's not just Jesse Waters calling for war. Other commentators are employing very similar rhetoric, including Alex Jones and Steve Bannon.

We're in a war.

The Latins was saying, put a bulls on Trump at Bullson As supporters.

Charlie Kirk's a casualty of war? Would war in this country?

Chaia Wrtcheck tweeted on the lips of TikTok account quote this is war. The Oathkeeper founder Stuart Rhodes announced on Info Wars that his militia would be reforming to help with security at right wing events.

Great, oh gosh.

It was a good Wired article Wednesday night, which collected various cost of violence among the right in the aftermath of the shooting. Quote. Ed Martin, US pardon attorney and former acting with Stornay for DC wrote on Twitter, quote for it is written, vengeance is mine. I will repay,

Next.

Influencer and unofficial Trump advisor Laura Lumer posted on Twitter, the left are terrorists. Christopher Ruffo, a conservative activist who popularized the demonization of critical race theory, suggested in a Twitter post that the radical left was responsible for the shooting and urged the US government to quote infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incars rate all those who are responsible for this

Oh yes, constantly.

Yeah, like that old guy in Panama who shot a protester blocking the street. The entire right rallied behind that man. Kirk himself has embraced Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot and killed two people after a plastic bag was thrown in the direction of Kyle Rittenhouse. Kirk was vocally supportive of the man who tried to attack Nancy Pelosi in her home and did attack pol Pelosi.

Yes, specifically specifically urged his audience to bail him out.

It was like not even two months ago that Minnesota state senator and her husband were killed. Political violence exists across the spectrum. This is not a left wing problem. This is an American problem.

Yeah.

I mean the vast majority of political of terrorist attacks that are politically motivated in the US are right wing like and have been for the last several decades.

Per the FBI, in the twenty twelve to twenty twenty one, fifty five percent of murders tied to political streamism came from white supremacy fourteen percent, anti government six percent to other right wing twenty percent, Islamist four percent left wing, and the white supremacy fifty five percent are far right Nazis.

Yeah.

In terms of like who did this? Yeah, I think we touched on Grouper's a little bit. We should probably talk a bit more about the kind of online feud between a chunk of Nick Fuintes's fan base and Charlie Kirk.

It was certainly more prominent a few years ago. As Kirk has himself has moved further to right, has adopted great replacement theory, the feud kind of dissipated, but it certainly was like a legitimate thing in the right for years.

Yes, to the extent that that's a number of folks that kind of have suspected that, like maybe that's who did it.

Again, we really have no idea.

I'm just bringing this up to make the point that, like, there's a variety of reasons why this guy could have done this, why this person could have done this, including could be an Epstein related thing. Right, there's a lot of anger at figures who kind of bought into the Trump line that we're done now with the Epstein stuff.

Crocker barrel logo logo, we have to go to war, we have to.

Go to war, We're at war.

I was thinking about that when you said that, like the lips of TikTok had tweeted that we were at war, Like you could probably go back and see dozens of other instances almost exactly the same statement.

Right, And is this something that could lead to mass Could this be because I've seen people comparing this guy like Charlie Kirk to Horst Wessel, who was a Nazi, was literally a pimp, was a member of the Nazi brown Shirts who was murdered and it became a huge rallying cry for the Nazi Party, right, they made a song about him. It was a big deal. I think

If you're not aware, they don't need to invent excuses either to like crack down on the left or no, or carry out their policies. They're already doing that. I've seen people go into complete panic mode because they're gonna be like, they're gonna use this this shooting to now do terrible things, as if they're not already doing terrible things, Like they don't need to wait for events to happen. They are more than willing just to do whatever they want when they want to.

Yes, that is exactly like, that's exactly what I would tell you. And in terms of like comparisons, I don't even think it's super useful to try to compare this to specific figures from fucking German history, because there's.

Really not America in twenty twenty five. Yeah, there's a viral TikTok of a man talking about the Book of Mormon, like like seconds after the shooting.

Standing next to where Kirk died, and we now know that he stole a bunch of shit from the booth that was covered in blood to sell it online. Like this, this is all of the books of the America in Germany.

You won't find anything like that in it.

Yeah, Like a better historical comparison we will see, right, might be Jose Carvo, whose death did immediately sort of was one of the things that accelerated the start of the Spanish Civil War, I guess, yeah, But even then, like, no one was tiktoking and grabbing much that was stained by his blood.

No, And there's no you can like say, like, oh, well, this figure's assassination preceded this kind of violence, but like, okay, was that figure a guy who did what Charlie Kirk did and was connected in the way that No, like this is an American thing, this is new. Yeah, this is a novel. His moment in history, and we don't know what's going to happen. I'm not saying, don't you know if you're the kind of person who has been

Like it like you can also submit the same image to like five different AI imaging programs and get five wildly different results for what the face quote unquote looks like.

And I just brought that up because I haven't seen that happen before with one of these things. And it was like, oh, okay, cool, that's a fun new.

This is gonna be something we'd have to deal with now for every single right preceding event in absolutely, yes, whatever this hellscape of the American century of humiliation looks like.

Yes.

The other thing I wanted to bring up is, within about like two to three hours after Kirk was killed, and after again it had been announced that he was dead, people were asking Grock is this video? Because the video was spreading wildly of him dying on everywhere. Really, but people asked on Twitter, they asked grok elon Musk's AI is this real? And the response that was posted initially was Charlie Kirk takes the roast in stride with a laugh.

That's gonna happen.

Yeah, you're right anyway, just as heads up. Ah, that's bleak. Yeah, that's pretty terrible.

All right.

Well that's that's I think all we got to say on this.

Yeah, we'll keep updating you is we learn more. I'm sure this will be developing over the weekend.

Yeah, this is going to keep being a major story. Well, I'm sure we'll do a dedicated episode on it next week.

Yeah.

Something else that happened on Wednesday, the same day as the Charlie Kirk assassination, was a school shooting in Colorado. Two students were shot before the shooter killed himself. Police have said, quote, we are looking at a mode if we don't have one yet. He was radicalized by some extremist network in the details of that will be down the road, and we wanted to give you that much about maybe a mindset for him. Unquote.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I guess it's just a marking of what kind of shootings Americans are aneured to and not school shootings that's business as.

Usual, especially if it's just a regular white male teenager.

Yeah.

Yeah, we'll be kind of following that one as well to see what it's online radicalization was. Yeah, they've already found so early, but yeah, it's pretty tragic that two school shootings happened in a day.

It was reported in multiple outlets last week that the Department of Justice was considering restricting gun ownership rights for transgender Americans in the wake of the Minneapolist Catholic school

Yeah.

On September fifth, the NRA made a statement reading, the Second Amendment isn't up for debate. The NRA supports the Second Amendment rights for all law abiding Americans to purchase, possess, and use firearms. The energy does not and will not support any policy proposals that implement sweeping gun bands that arbitrarily strict law abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights

Yeah.

Yeah, registration and like laws forcing people to register their.

Guns, and like gun control laws in general.

Are that restrict at all access to firearms are a prelude inevitably to mass confiscation. Right, Like that has been the that has been the line for a long time. This does not surprise me. Yeah, No, the stance doesn't. The fact that they said something publicly during this does. Because the NRA has been quiet a lot when there's an issue, like, for example, that the shooting the Filando Castile right, who was legally carrying a concealed firearm when

Yeah, there's no current legal mechanism that exists for them to do this. They would have to invent or heavily alter the current weight that gun rights can be taken away, which is right now through individual court cases where a

I think the only way they could again would be if they try to restrict en mass like the prescription of hormones specifically to people with gender dysphoria or trans people, which is difficult for a lot of reasons, but would provide it like a pretext for Okay, these people are now taking stuff an illegal substance, and you can go

Ever.

Again, Yeah, I mean, you could maybe do something through the FDA, but I don't see how you could do it just to trans people and.

How right, like, how would you keep it legal for all of Joe Rogan's friends, and that's just like through the FDA, right, I don't I literally just don't know.

Yeah, I'm not super familiar with that.

But this is obviously something that we will keep an eye on. This is this is like a possibility that we've discussed the right wanting to enact for years now, and the fact that the DOJ might even have some people in there who are doing preliminary considerations. It obviously is a worrying sign of the general position on trans rights and transgund rights.

Yeah, for our immigration update this week, I want to start by talking about the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court confirmed in its case that CBP and more permanently ICE can continue their policy of racial profiling. This overturned a lower court judges ordered that prohibits them from stopping someone

That one was in Montana.

The ACLU of Montana sued them to Spanish speaking ladies were speaking Spanish in a store. They actually said hello to a board of drill agent in Englis, who proceeded to detain them on the basis that not many people speak Spanish in Montana.

I think the name is from Spanish, like Montagna, but maybe I'm wrong.

The State Department has also issued guidance that non immigrant visa applicants can now only schedule interviews in their own country. So this is a further burden for people seeking visas to come to the United States. Right Previously, you could do it another US embassy or consulate for instance. You know, if you were let's say French but resident in Spain, you could apply at the consulate or embassy there. Right

For example.

Finally, I want to get onto the case of the dozens of watermelon children who came to the US and accompanied by adults they are related to and who the Trump admin attempted to deport over the Labor Day weekend.

Right.

Previously, the government had made the claim that the children's parents wanted them to be returned. It's dropped that claim after Router's published a Guatemalan government document which completely refutes that none of the children's parents seem to want them to come home. So what the government is claiming here is that the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is under HHS, is moving the children, not the Department of Homeland Security.

At the plant. They should be going home today.

They were supposed to go home yesterday, but there were some delays so far. ICE has claimed that these people were working without proper authorization and Slash or but not in the US with proper authorization, their lawyers have claimed, and The Guardian has foundly documents that confirm that many of them had B one visa status.

B one is like you can do some work on a B one.

It also can be just an extended term tourist visa and you can do certain jobs but not other jobs, and you still get paid at home where you were on to B one, which seems to be what these people were doing. Right, Like, they can supervise construction on a B one, but you can't do construction, and it would make sense for people who are very expert in the construction of these highly technical buildings to supervise that construction.

It seems that they were in the country to supervise the setting up of this car plant.

Correct, Yeah, most South Koreans can also get est visa waivers, which like it's not exactly the same, but it's kind of a ninety day B one visa.

So there are some people who cannot.

Right like, if they have been cremated of crimes in such that they'd have to go through the B one process.

But it seems very.

Unlikely at least that that they were not in the country without any documentation and because like that would be a stranging to do when they can get a best of visa waiver. What's really weird about this is the state of Georgia has invested millions, if not billions, in bringing this plant to Georgia. Right, it has created a significant economic boost. Something like ninety percent of the products

Well, and this follows the whole point of Trump's tariffs. We're trying to bring, Yeah, manufacturing to the United States. You have these specialized workers to help supervise the construction and managing of equipment. They get this plant up and running. And even if you're even if you're doing that, even if you're bringing manufacturing back to the States, somehow you still get bitten, Yeah, big time, bitten by the Trump horse.

I guess yeah.

I mean it does sort of line up with this working closer to the Feurer hypothesis, right that you have these counter valent impulses and everyone's just trying to do things that they think Trump will like, and kind of sometimes those can directly contradict each other, as is happening here. There's not really a coherent policy platform.

No, they're just so focused on trying to get like the base numbers up, to get the number of deportations higher than it's ever been.

Yeah.

And therefore, and you have this this sort of series of impulses which motivate Trump is and one of which is deport as many people as possible.

Yeah.

Another is broadly bring manufacturing jobs back to America, but not if foreign people are helping supervise the construction. I guess Understandably, South Carea is very upset. More so, I think because these are like middle class professionals who have been detained. Right, they appear to have negotiated a voluntary departure for these people, which it's not like a voluntary departure like you came on toil they Disney landed, you're going home on the plane. It can still have long

Yeah, that is about all I have.

I'm going to keep looking, especially this Georgia story, see if it develops any further, and if it's worthy of a whole episode.

We'll we'll do a whole episode on that.

Speaking of Georgia, the long delayed Cop City reco case has finally made some progress in the courts. I have been working on the final scripted piece of my Cop City coverage for basically this whole summer. I've been slowly chipping away at it. Part of the reason why I have not finished that yet is because essentially the whole court case, like the sixty one defendant Rico case, got reset in May. They changed judges, and that has delayed

Jesus Christ.

This is not believed to be true by reputable medical authorities, but the report is set to release some time in September. It was announced like months ago when Aarvika Junior said that by September we will finally know the cause of autism quote quote, And it seems the report is still churning away but set to be released this month, and it will include a few other claims, which we will report on in more detail once the report is actually out.

Fantastic.

So I heard from somebody who is waiting on their work permit. A Kurdish woman who came to the United States to claim asylum from Turkey from Northern Kurdistan, and because she doesn't have a work permit yet and she's gonna be waiting for her work permit. Sometime she's asking for help to cover her basic sort of day to day expenses. And this is a thing that people often

Hard for them.

The website is gofund dot me slash DA thirty nine F seven D zero B. We'll have that link in the show notes as well. If you'd like to email us, you can do so. The way to do it is to reach out to cool Zone tips at proton dot me.

That is an encrypted email address.

All that means is that you will have to also use an encrypted email address if you like it to be end to end encrypted.

All right, and here's some ads. We're back and I guess it's time to drop some bars about Jeffrey Epstein.

Somehow Epstein has returned learned.

Yeah, that's that joke. It always gets old.

So one of the big pieces of news this week before the thing that we started the episode with, I mean, this was the story before that happened, is that, as a result of the ongoing investigation into Epstein and whether or not you know how involved was Trump, how involved

We did Democrats on the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed the Epstein birthday book from Jeffrey Epstein's estate once the estate made a statement saying that they have the book and wouldn't cooperate with a subpoena.

And there's a a bunch of news articles summarizing it. If you want to read the thing for yourself, just google document cloud Jeffrey Epstein fiftieth Birthday Book, and the whole thing is in there.

Yeah.

Right, I would say, like just the kind of slight devotion, I guess between this and Charlie kirkshooting, maybe.

You don't need to give yourself a break.

I'm not saying you should.

I just wanted to let people know where they can get to the original source if they don't want to have it mediated by a media, right.

It's always good to do that.

We're going to mediate it for you now.

Yeah.

So it opens, as far as I can tell. The first well, I mean, there's there's a list of contents. The prologue is written by Gilan Maxwell. Then there's letters from the family, Paula Seymour and Marco I guess your relatives. Then it's split into Brooklyn. So there's friends of his from Brooklyn who are Warren Eisenstein, neutral, I don't know who that is, Terry Kafka. Very funny that there's a Kafka involved, doctor Stephen Levy, and Michael Bookoles. The next

Is the letter is really unsettling.

Yeah, Donald Trump is in there. We'll get to that in a second. Yet, Donald Trump is in there, obviously these are not. Morton Zuckerman is on there, Leslie Wexner is on there. So a number of like very prominent people unknown is at the very end. I don't know like that. That's like literally how the book listed it. So they just have a letter from someone who's presumably his friend but didn't put a name.

I mean, it's it's a smart move if you're doing things which you have federal crimes.

And then after that you've got the letters from scientists friends of his, which include people we brought up on my episode about a bioscience company who pretends that they're cloning dire wolves and Martin Noak are both on here, so that's great, oh good. And then after that, I just noted girlfriends is like the third group of people who had letters, and all those names were blacked out.

No good whatever it is.

Yeah, anyway, There's some more names on there, but they're not super relevant. Gilan Maxwell's prologue is handwritten, or at least the note in front of it is handwritten. I know you will enjoy looking through the book, and I hope you will derive as much pleasure looking through it as I did putting it together for you. Happy birthday, Love, Gilan Maxwell. So that's the prologue. One of the first pictures, I mean, the first picture in the book is Jeffrey

Good to give a place in times that are illegal.

Yeah, this guy says that he was managing the money of a family who lived in Fairfield, Iowa. Hog farming is a serious industry there, and many people feel there is more than a little truth in the saying that it's hard to tell the difference between the girls and the hogs in southeast Iowa. Jeffrey came to Fairfield to check in on their investigation on their investment opportunities. He asked about the nightlife and we could only laugh as we dropped him off at the local motel.

Well.

The next morning, a group before of us picked up Jeffrey to give him a tour of the area. At our first stop, we parked in front of a bookstore. As we were getting out of the car, a spectacular, tall, blonde woman suddenly came out of the store, walked directly up to Jeffrey and announced, I am new to this area. What's going on? It turns out she was a sales representative for a firm solling academic brand and athletic clothing.

Yeah, yeah, what seck, Yeah, you can do that.

Okay, here's Dershowitz's Who was that Man with Epstein? Is the title of the letter. Inquiring minds are asking who is that man with Epstein? Jeffrey Epstein is, of course one of the world's most famous men, a household name throughout the planet. His picture has appeared on the cover of every magazine in the world. Everyone knows his story, from his humble roots on Coney Island to his rise to one of the most envied public figures in the Western world. But what is he doing flying to Africa

It comes with a note yes, reading Dear Jeffrey, As a birthday gift to you, I managed to obtain an early version of the Vanity Unfair article. I talked them into changing the focus from you to Bill Clinton. As you will see from the enclosed excerpt, Happy birthday in best regards.

And then there's a fake Vanity Unfair article. Yeah or cover?

Yeah? That who is Jack the Ripper?

Was it?

Jeffrey Epstein? Al Qaeda in South America? Financed by Epstein Jeffrey Epstein stole my heart in another courtroom dispatches. It's like really crudely animated, but yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's what do you even say? Oh, there is a quote the fat on the Vanity Fair cover attributed to Epstein that says life is a pure flame and we live by an invisible sun within us. So I guess that's a Jeffrey Epstein original.

Wow, how profound.

Before we talk about the Trump letter, there's this one other image I didn't like to discuss this what I can only described as a grooming themed drawing Oh God yeah to him as part of its birthday card, depicting Jeffrey Epstein in nineteen eighty three giving balloons in a lolly pomp to three young children girls like children, children.

And importantly, his pockets are turned out out and the pants he's wearing are like patched and old. He's clearly poor in this. In nineteen eighty three, by the way, he was working as a tutor and a teacher, like he was teaching kids at private schools like, So that's what's represented here.

The other section of the drawing is in two thousand and three and has Jeffrey Epstein sitting on the beach with four women touching his body.

One woman is very clearly touching his genitals and has JE tattooed on her ass.

Jeffrey Epstein's jet is flying above.

You know it's his jet because the actual in number of his real jet is written on the side of the jet.

And on the beach he is on a lawn chair outside of what sort of resembles Trump's Marlago resort in terms of the architectural style, the arched doorways, the tiered structure and lay out of the palm trees, and the beach. This building does not match his house in Florida, or his house in the Southwest, or his house on the island, which appears very different with blue roofing. I'm not saying this necessarily is mar A Lago, but if I were to try to draw mar A Lago from memory, it

Yeah, we should talk about literally. The next photo from this is a picture of Jeffrey Epstein holding a check for twenty two thousand dollars to him from Donald Trump. There's three people posing next to him. One of them is a woman whose face is blacked out. There's also another woman with her face blacked out behind them. But the man who's sitting next to the woman at what looks like a dinner table does not have his face blacked out.

I don't know why.

And it says on this Jeffrey is showing early talents with money and women cells fully depreciated. And then the name of the woman who is being sold is blacked out to Donald Trump for twenty two five hundred dollars. Shoot early people skills too. Even though I handled the deal, I didn't get any of the money for the girl.

So pretty sickening.

Joke, Yeah, yeah, genuinely like nauseating literally, yeah, like him holding up a check Donald Trump gave him for a girl.

Like a fake novelty check signed by someone who's not Trump, just someone signing Donald Trump, not Donald Trump's signat JEM. But people joking. It's a bit about Jeffrey selling a woman to Trump four twenty two five hundred dollars?

Was this a fully depreciated Is that the phrasing used, That is the phraseated? Yes, yes, yeah, it's fucking disgusting.

And then we get down to the original Trump letter, which we've talked about on the show.

We've read it to you.

This is the one where's Donald says it's framed as a conversation between them, and Donald says, enigma's never age. Have you noticed that anyway? The only thing noteworthy about this is now we have the drawing of the woman. It's drawn around the script, and it's I would say, pretty clear a pubescent girl. Like there's breasts drawn on.

Their breasts do not look fully developed, and they do not look they're not large like no, and the position of them is higher. They look like underdeveloped breasts.

Yes, it looks like a drawing of a young girl, like of a child.

It's so much more creepy than anyone who like tried to draw what this might have looked like, has like previously imagined like they were all drawing you know, like conventionally attractive like adult female bodies. This is much more creepy.

Now I will say, it doesn't look like his signature is meant to be pubic care here.

It's in a similar position. But you know this is this is a very abstract drawing. Yes, his signature is just his first name, Donald, which he signs a lot of personal notes with not his full Donald Trump's signature. Trump is maintaining that he did not sign this, that this is a forgery. He is unaware of this letter, even though the signature matches other signatures from him around this time. And this just feels like a very Donald Trump thing to do. Yeah, and is worded similarly to

Right, oh yeah, No.

It's also worth noting one of the last things in the book is recipe for like chocolate chip chip cookies. I try to figure out who put the recipe in there, but their name is blacked out. They're right under Henry Rossofsky and read above Les Wexner. I don't know who put that chocolate chip cookie recipe in here, but I might try to make those cookies.

The epsteine biscuit I wouldn't eat those.

Yeah.

A few other things before we close this episode related to Epstein. On September, fifth House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that Trump was actually a secret FBI informant tasked with taking down Jeffrey Epstein.

I hadn't heard it did a great job. Yeah, Well, I'm.

Saying that when Epstein did as a hoax, it's a terrible, unspeakable evil. He believes that himself when he first heard the room where kicked Hm out of Mildago, who was an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down. The President knows and has great sympathy for the women who suffered these unspeakable arms. It's detestable to him, and I've spoken about this as recently as twenty hours ago.

This should be documents that could that could corroborate that. Onment, imagine what think.

The temver eighth Mike Johnson walked back his FBI informant comments, telling reporters he was referring to what epstein victims attorneys has said that Trump was quote willing to help law enforcement to go after the guy who was a disgusting child abuser as at trafficker. All the allegations. That's what they heard. I don't know if I used the right terminology, but that's common knowledge, and everybody knows that I was repeating what has been common knowledge for a long time.

Yeah.

Project Veritas did a operation against a DOJ employee in which they recorded him saying this. Those files do exist.

Yeah, thousands and thousands of Page five still redactor every Republican or conservative person in those files.

Leave all the liberal democratic people in those files.

I mean they visited that Maxwell person.

Yeah, and also involved got.

Transferred to a minimum security Quiston series, which is against BOP positive because it's just a so he's a committed sex minter.

The offer or something to keep about.

Yet, that was the acting Deputy Chief of the Office of Enforcement operations Joseph Schnitt telling a stranger about the FBI and DOJ's handling of the Epstein files.

The DOJ responded to O'Keefe saying, quote, Joseph schnid had no role in the department's internal review of Epstein materials. He has confirmed as much to leadership, and we plan on publishing his written statement to that effect when we have it. In his words, the comments he made were based on quote what he learned in the media, and he has quote no knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Miss Maxwell other than what was reported in the news unquote.

Yeah, and James O'Keeffe out there with the journalism first trap. I guess I wonder if it's is it a one party consent? This is in DC, right, I don't believe DC is one party consent.

Yeah, that I would be shocked. I'm not sure how O'Keefe pulls all this stuff off legally.

He could get in trouble for this one. Yeah.

My understanding would be just to be clear for people who want in on the jog, and like in most states of the Union, I think you need both people's consent to record a conversation. You could argue, I guess he didn't have a reasonable expectation of privacy sitting out there, but I think this is very clearly a clandestine recording.

Oh wait, no, no, no, sorry, d d C is a one party consents area. Dam Okay, well there you go. Wow, Okay, I did yet I did not know that.

Yep.

So well he's safe.

Yeah, I guess if that date was in DC. You got to look if the date was in DC. A lot of jurisdictions around there bumping up. But yeah, that's surprising.

No, he's good.

All right. Well, I think that's all we have for this week, which is a lot. This was a massive news week. This is an extra long episode, but sometimes that happens.

Congratulations on making it this far.

Yeah, and may every day be a new wonderful secret as no. Donald Trump told Jeffrey Epstein.

Stop him to turn it off.

We reported the news, We reported the news.

Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly in episode descriptions.

Thanks for listening.