It Could Happen Here Weekly 222

systems within Israel and in Palestine. We work mainly in Area C in the West Bank, in Mesaphiliata. Yeah, so we do food security, like food packs that are truly appropriate for each community receiving them based off of what they are asking, whether it's diapers, baby formula.

on their feet and understood what their virus was. That was kind of the beginning of our deep, deep political awakening of this place, thinking that there would be a system that would come and serve the vulnerable communities around us.

first place. You know, people often say like, oh, you know, someone's poor they don't have food in their fridge like in their ways of trying to raise funds or whatever. And it's an atrocity almost to kind of depict it that way, because all of these communities are actively.

And in that situation, I can also turn to my community and my friends, Like I have a friend that what he does for work is kind of gathering all this information of articles and everything that's coming out to educate. So all right, cool, I can use those articles to help teach this person that yes, there is in fact ethnic cleansing happening in the West Bank, like.

Let's have a conversation about this. At least they're asking, yeah, and they're wanting to learn, they're questioning something. That's that's the way forward. And with that being said, you know, the past two enough years have also been excruciating living in this society, like you're living in a genocidal society and you're around people that could justify certain, you know, acts,

certain war crimes. Yeah, you kind of find yourself not wanting to engage, not wanting to love, not wanting to teach, not wanting not that I'm the one teaching, like we're all learning together about this and hosting, but obviously not wanting to have conversations sometimes because you're just like, well, you see what's been happening online over the past two years, and you still can't comprehend what is going on. Then go, I don't know what I can do to help that.

But then I have to remind myself that if I am here. If I'm living here, I have a responsibility and that is to, yeah, facilitate more meetings conversations in which people will be exposed to the injustice is being committed in our name. And that's a problem with liberal Zionism as well, because liberal Zionists will be like, oh my god, yeah, it's terrible what's happening in the West Bank settlers blah blah blah. But like those still send their you know, their boys to go be pilots in

the army and you know, bomb children. And it's kind of like finding the way to kind of be like, no, no, you can't, like you can't be against that, and then before that.

Like what role are you intending to pay? You kind of touched on it already in terms of like teaching and learning within your own society.

It's a pretty tight knit community and this has been a beautiful thing of like trying to you know, always there's always a knits and grits of blah blah blah, but I mean, uplifting each other and collaborating with each other is so important to not feel alone as Israelis against the occupation, Yeah, and for an actual true democracy in the land or liberation.

we do work with different groups within Palestine. One of the people that was, you know, the main receiver and distributor of these boxes was Adadarin, who was murdered in July by settler you know, on Levy.

would need to happen in order to get there. I think that our responsibility as Israeli left is to keep fighting for that, is to keep fighting for that.

you know, obviously you don't decide what goes down. You ask each family how they want to deal with this, and you serve that. So I think protective presence is one of the most important things Israeli's israel leftists can do, because yeah, like I said earlier, it's just getting worse and worse, and it's at a high. It's always been bad, but the past. Honestly, I think since no other land came out, I think it's like gotten a lot of

attention on them. Essentially, well, there's always been attacked by settlers of course, yeah, but I think that, Yeah, in the past year it's gotten to an all time high.

to constantly learn. I feel like so many people in Israel are in just like this constant victimhood of like the whole world is against us, like everyone's anti Semitic, blah blah blah blah blah, and like from that to what actually I mean, Obviously there's anti Semitism, obviously there are people not saying that there isn't of course, but without any accountability for what we have turned our backs to over the past two and a half years, Like there's so much work to be done, and I think,

you know the easy way, whether it's a Western.

It's it's hard because we're not we're a really tiny community like that. You know, there's people that again are against you know, all the war blah blah blah, like but yeah, but not seeing how that is like interconnected with the entire premise of this state. There's a lot of work to be done, and it's hard because you're also bitter, like you know, and you want to have compassion within you're bitter.

I get that, and I have compassion for that. But then there's also just like sometimes you're.

you know, why are they complaining? Like, but then you know your society, and you know what they have or haven't been exposed to, and you know what they've chosen not to look at to not necessarily at this point what they have or haven't been exposed, because I think that's also a bit of a kind of forgiving card, because I think at this point you still call it Ai. If you still call it like, there's some deep reckoning to do there.

to turn their back. But at the same time, it's like systems have led them to point where they dehumanize to this extent that they can see the videos and either make excuses or pretend they're not real, you know. And so it's like the work is to to disrupt the systems, you know. I think in that way, I think about like structural constraints that is more worthwhile in

my effort. If I wasn't israel leftist, I'm not, But if I was in your shoes, like, that's more worthwhile in my effort than to be like kind of demoralized by individuals. If you know, if you understand what I mean, I guess that kind of leads me to my next question. I mean, I know that October seventh was such kind of like a breaking point, but obviously the Israeli left

like was in the minority before as well. But what would you say, kind of like in the last two years and kind of to think about moving forward, what are the biggest challenges that the Israeli left faces to continue in its effort, whether it's to educate or to be a type of protective presence, whether physically in the West Bank or in their presence in Israel.

I think, like people not caring, people not getting up and leaving their houses and doing things and organizing and mobilizing just letting this happen.

There's so many injustices towards different people, and there are people that are like actively going out and like fighting for these like terrible, terrible, fanatic ideologies. And I think whenever we people don't. I said this in a podcast recently, and someone told me, like, wait, you have to take up that part, because it sounds like you're like voting, like you'rely grooting for the.

It's not fun to do a lot, even though actually there's a lot of things that are really beautiful as well, being in the West Bank, being with people, playing with children, like these are beautiful, beautiful things.

the left fell off, you know, after October seventh. Do you feel like, now we're twenty twenty six, we're recording February twenty second, twenty twenty six, do you feel like people are starting.

within an apartheid state. They are, like I said earlier, sending their sons to or I'm not saying that's an easy thing, but at the same time opposing the war and not acknowledging Palestinian suffering. And I think there's become many people and this is from my personal experience, that just are like like I said, apathetic, kind of like looking forward with their hands on the sides of each

of their eyes, trying not to see what's happening. You know, there are people thousands, tens of thousands in the streets protesting. You know, they'll be waving Israeli flags. That's hard for me. I don't feel like I'm in the group that would ever wave a flag. And I think they see themselves as left. Yeah again, like I said, like, you can't be fighting for human rights, liberal ideologies within an apartheid state.

You can't fight for democracy in an apartheid state. Like we have to touch the root of this, all every injustice happening on this land or in Israel in forty eight, Like, in my opinion, the root of it is the occupation. We've planted roots on rotten soil, We've pushed people out of their homes and took them as our own, and we're not really willing to reconcile what we've become, what we've done. And I think only when that starts to happen there could be some sort of future here on

this land for both people. But as long as we're not acknowledging the atrocities we are committing, and the atrocities are silence is allowing to perpetuate, then the left here is very very tiny.

remind yourself this is what I believe in. This is love, and it's not from bitterness, and it's not from being on a moral high ground like I'm doing this because I believe in it as me as DD and I really hope other people join and other people also open their hearts to these injustices and realize that in order for everyone to have a just reality of just future, then you have to fight for everyone to have those rights as well.

And in Israel it's like, you can be liberal or you can call yourself the left and advocate in this way. But unless, like you said, you realize what the construction of the state and its continuation kind of like this endless ethnic cleansing project that's happening in the territories, It's like, unless you address that, it will bleed into you.

Inside there was coffee and breakfast, signs and posters tax the rich embroidered beanies, and over a thousand New Yorkers gathered to tell Kathy Hochel and the New York State

Legislature that it's time to tax the rich. After recovering from the morning bus ride, a rally was held in the Armory Arena, hosted by New York City Councilman Chosay, with speakers from local unions like the Nurses Association ten ninety nine SCIU, the Taxi Workers Alliance, immigrant justice organizations, childcare, housing and education advocates, as well as the co chair of the New York City DSA. Following the speeches, the crowd practiced chants and protest songs ahead of the march

to the Capitol. The rally at the Armory just wrapped up. Now a thousand or so people are marching on Washington towards the State Capitol Building in Albany. The crowd is now in front of the Legislative building. There's some New York taxicabs honking outside. The New York d Essay marching band Why we Are.

entered the security gate area of the Capitol. We'll return to Socialist January sixth later this episode, but first some context on why this protest is happening and what it's hoping to achieve. On January first, Democratic Socialist a Zoron Mumdani was sworn in as mayor of New York City. But you don't magically get your social democracy paradise once a new mayor is sworn in. Getting elected and taking

power is just the first step. Governor Hokel has been resistant to raising taxes, and Zoron has said he's open to other funding avenues, but that a small tax increase on the wealthiest New Yorkers and corporations would be the

fairest method of funding his agenda. Since taking office, Mayor Mamdani has decided to focus on governing and fostering a working relationship with Kathy Hokeel, rather than directing energy towards another uphill electoral battle that would create a purely adversarial relationship between the Mayor and the governor, making any concessions

much more difficult in the interim. But extra pressure still must be applied to Governor Hockel in order to secure the funding for the Mamdani mandate that voters delivered in

the twenty twenty five election. So, rather than discarding the grassroots organizing apparatus that got Mamdani elected, after the election, that apparatus and its network of volunteers spun off into a new organization called Our Time, which, in coordination with the New York City DSA, organizes door to door canvassing, phone banking, community events, and rallies to win an affordable

New York City and help enact Mamdani's policy agenda. Achieving Mamdani's campaign promises was already going to be a tall task, But then early into the new administration, the Mayor's office and comptroller discovered the city was facing an unexpected financial crisis in the form of a twelve billion dollar deficit

left by former Mayor Eric Adams. This budget crisis was due to years of financial mismanagement and the under budgeting of essential services like rental and cash assistance, shelters, health insurance, and special education. While in office, Eric Adams covered up this massive budget deficit, leaving the gaps grossly understated, gaps that were made worse by divestment in New York City

by the state under former Governor Andrew Cuomo. Since the financial crisis of the seventies, the New York City mayor has been required by law to have a balanced budget. So rather than sweeping this under the rug by continuing to cook the city's books like his predecessor, Zoron chose complete transparency about the crisis he has inherited and how his administration will attempt to solve it. Zoron signed an executive order to designate chief Savings Officers in every city

agency to quote, streamlined processes and eliminate waste. Through his relationship with Governor Kathy Hochel, the mayor secured one point five billion dollars in state aid last month. That money, combined with higher than expected Wall Street revenues, new savings measures, and eliminating inefficiencies and bureaucratic waste, have shrunk the deficit to five point five billion, still a painful gap to fill. In the preliminary budget, unveiled February seventeenth, the mayor laid

out two paths to close this gap. The first is a two percent income tax increase on New Yorker's making over a million dollars a year, as well as a tax on the most profitable corporations. If that doesn't happen, the city will be forced to use the limited tools at its disposal by rating the Rainy Day Fund and raising city property tax by nine point five percent. Mayor Mamdani says this second option is one of last resort, as the property tax is the only mechanism for revenue

the city has complete control of. The preliminary budget has face criticism for falling short of promises to increase funding to parks and libraries. The library budget is zero point one point one percent less than Mamdani campaigned on, and the park budget remains flat rather than boosting it to one percent of the total budget as hoped. Though this

is still preliminary and subject to change. This budget does contain five hundred million dollars for new programmatic spending, including new funding for shelter services, mental health care, and the Emergency Food Program, and cancels in Eric Adams's plan to add five thousand more NYPD officers, Though as promised, their budget remains effectively the same. Mayor Mamdani says that funding for his proposed Department of Community Safety will be covered

in the executive budget later this April. A number of Mamdani's key policies don't relate to the city budget. For example, making buses free will require deals with the state the MTA, but Mamdanie just appointed six new people to the Rent

Guidelines Board, making a rent freeze more likely. In his second week in office, mcdonnie announced a partnership with the governor to provide universal childcare for kids under five in New York State and in New York City, expand pre K the free three K program and free childcare for two year olds, which the state will fully fund for the first two years on top of the city budget crisis.

The tax the Rich protests are also in the backdrop of Trump's tax cuts and the dismantling of the social safety net, calls to tax the richer, calls to fund local services, and whether the massive cuts to snap food stamps and medicaid in Trump's One Big, Beautiful Bill. The Tax the Rich campaign writes, quote, if we don't tax the ritch, millions of New Yorkers will lose healthcare or go hungry. New York can afford to stand up to

Trump's agenda unquote. At the Albany rally, City Councilman chi Osa spoke about how New York State has over one hundred billionaires and New York actually gained thirteen thousand millionaires in twenty twenty four alone. This fight to tax the rich is a fight that the unions are united on, as demonstrated by the attendees and representatives present at the Albany rally.

billion dollars annually. The second bill is called the Fair Share Act, which seeks to address how New York City essentially charges a flat income tax if you earn fifty thousand dollars or five million dollars, where you pay practically the same rate of roughly three point nine percent. The Fair Share Act seeks to add a two percent surcharge to those with incomes of over one million dollars per year,

which would raise about four billion dollars annually. The third bill is a tax on the most profitable corporations, a corporate tax bill ensuring companies doing business in New York State with over two point five million in profits pay what they owe in taxes. This proposal would raise seven

billion dollars annually. And finally, a bill which could be funded by some of the former tax bills is the Universal Childcare Act, which would ensure free, year round, full day childcare without means testing, and guarantee that all childcare workers are paid a genuine living wage. As of now, twenty two New York City council people have signed on to tax the rich by supporting the Fair Share Act. Only four more council people are needed to reach a majority.

So with that context, let's return to the Albany protest, both outside and inside the New York Capitol Building.

I am in the lower concourse of the Capitol building, barely getting through security on the top floor because there's so many people, not because I was inherently dangerous, but now a large, large group of people are coming in via the lower concourse, about to reach the main security gate at the lower level. Looks like a few hundred down this corridor about to enter the Capitol holding signs taking up the entire passageway.

and healthy facilities. Students are not getting.

not pay any property tax. In many places around the country, there are similar institutions that still make what we call pilots, so payments in lieu of taxes, and YUM in Columbia don't even do that. So it would take a constitutional amendment at the state level to require them to pay property taxes, and that's what the Repair Act would allow us to do. It would have to go through multiple legislatures in order to get a constitutional amendment that would

require them to pay property taxes. That's another way to raise revenue for CuNi.

teachers have resigned or retired and not been replaced. So PSC is fighting for a renewed in vestment to hire more full time staff and repair and maintain facilities to improve not just their working conditions but their students' learning conditions. A part of the new deal for Cooney is also fighting for the first sixty credits to be free for

all students. Once the crowd outside managed to find a way to enter the Capitol through the alternative entrances, groups split off to march around the interior perimeter while others lobbied legislators. Lunch was set up on the third floor. After a quick bite, even more people dispersed through the capital complex to hand out flyers to legislators and their staff, while small groups lobbied door to door in the Legislative

Office building and organizers attended private meetings. The action was timed to catch politicians and capital staff while they were on their own lunch break as they walked around the

Empire State Plaza and eventually back to the chambers. By early afternoon, as a grand finale, hundreds of people packed the corridor from the Legislative offices to the Assembly and Senate, lining both sides of the hallway with chanting union members and organizers handing flyers to politicians and staff who hurried through the corridor. Supportive Assembly members cheered on the protest as they walked through the tunnel. That is the current state of the tax the Rich corridor.

And I've said this both because it's important to create a fair at tax system and also because of the fact that we're facing a five point four billion dollar fiscal deficit at this time, the likes of which we haven't seen since the Great Recession, and my not attending one event does not change in any way the strength with which I believe this, the urgency with which I

believe we have to respond to it. And I'm thankful for New Yorkers who continue to make it clear that they too want to build a city that everyone who calls it home can afford. The Governor and I are in constant communication, and we are always looking to build a healthier, stronger city. I'm appreciative of our partnership in that, and I know we have a long budget process to go through, and I'm encouraged by the beginnings of it.

Not as many people will be keen on canvassing right after spending six months canvassing for an election, even if the election was a victory. Our Time aimed to send twenty five thousand Tax the Rich letters to state legislators by the end of January, but as of now the website lists under seven thousand letters sent. But the Albany takeover protest was just the opening act. The state budget is set to be finalized by March thirty first, and there will be Tax the Rich events across the state

leading up to the end of the month. This next week and a half, New York City DSA and Our Time will host a Week of Action or a week of tax shin to increase pressure on the legislature and the governor as they head into budget negotiations, proving the diversity of this coalition. Confusingly, there are two different time spans listed for the Week of Action across the social media and org websites March fifth through the tenth or March seventh through the fourteenth.

get the relief they need. We have until March to build enough pressure to win a state budget that funds free childcare, backfills the cuts, and secures resources to do so much more unquote, beyond running the biggest city in the country. As a secondary goal, Momdani seeks to provide an example that left wing politicians can responsibly govern and that left wing policies can make people's lives better and more affordable, and New Yorkers are organizing to make that example as strong as it can be.

other cities. And by night, as the attacks were going on, As the strikes were going on, bennam and Antonio came on TV and he said that I have some news. I have some information that confirms that Alikamani is dead, which caused a lot of panic and excitement among the people, and everybody was really excited and they were waiting for this to be confirmed. And then some people came out

and said, no, it's not true. But after some hours, the Iranian state media, the TV channels all started confirming that. So following that the attacks did not stop. They were still going on. And then the American Army also joined. This is a completely coordinated cooperation between US and Israel. So as they were attacking different IRGC bases and the facilities belonging to the government, the Iranian government started attacking

the neighboring countries. They attacked Uaa, they attacked Katar, they attacked Bahrain, they attacked Iraq, and they attacked also Iraqi Curtistan region, and they were just mainly targeting the US basis or facilities belonging to the US, but soon after they started attacking civilian buildings like hotels, like just randomly attacking different directions, And at the same time they also started sending missiles and drones towards Israel, which majority of

them were intercepted. So they've been attacking these neighboring countries since the beginning of this war, and they have been specifically targeting Iraqi Kurdistan because first, the US has a lot of big military bases there in Iraq and Iraqi Kuddhistan region, and at the same time they are the Kurdish parties from Iran who are based there and the regime has been seeing them as one of the major

threats since decades. So since the beginning of this whole war, they have been targeting these Kurdish parties a lot, and they also attacked there is a refugee base that the families of the Kurdish forces basically lived there. They also attacked there, but luckily nobody was killed or injured, but some leagues were damaged. And they attacked Erbil with drones and missiles several times, which were all mainly intercepted by

the US. Air defense systems because of the remainings of the missiles and the drones that were falling down from the sguise. Some people were lightly injured or some buildings were damaged. But yeah, still it's a crazy thing to see because previously in the past years, Iran had attacked or built several times and also other regions, but the US or the other countries that were there, they didn't really intercept the drones or the missiles. There's also something

new that we're seeing. It's also important to know that Iran has also attacked Cypress, like British military bases were targeted there, but the drones or the missiles were sent from Lebanon. What's going on right now is the full scare war, and I think when you look at it, it's nothing like what we've seen before. If you want to compare it to what happened in Iraq the US invasion,

this is completely different. I think it's it's even larger than that because Iran is a very big country and there are hundreds or maybe thousands of points across the country that have been targeted with heavy bombings inside Tehran, around Tehran. It's also really incredible to know, because the amount of intel that you need for this is also really a lot. I've seen videos, I've seen footage, I've seen reports that some random checkpoints on some remote places,

especially in Curtison, we're targeted. So this is also something that shows that how really coordinated and well planned this attack and this war is. I want to jump into something else. A lot of people areally focused on these major attacks, major developments like yeah, they're attacking Dubai, they're attacking Doh. These are all happening, and of course the civilians they are also in danger. I think somebody in

Doha was killed in the first day. It was just a civilian that was killed by the remainings of a massol or a drone. And this has made things really hard for the people on the ground. Many people are trapped in the airports on the borders. So this is something that's happening to the people outside of I round, but inside Iran there is massive bombings everywhere wherever the

iergy or the intelligence service has a facility. And at the same time, the regime has cut off the internet, even though the normal phone lines barely work, and it's just so hard and almost impossible to get really precise information about what's happening in the cities and the towns around, just like what happened in the in the early January, like during the process. Only a few people have access

to the internet, and it's very limited. Yeah, they share some videos with channels and like with news agencies, but it's very limited. For example, in my hometown today, some of the major I ergency bases and intelligence facilities that were some of the most important ones in western side of Iran, or as we call it, Iranian critisonal Rochalot, they were all bombed and I've been trying to contact

people to see what happened exactly. I'm sure that there are civilians killed because the regime also has put all these bases inside the cities, near parks, near hospitals, near schools, near just random houses in the city. So a lot of people are possibly killed, but we don't know how many who are they. So this is also like not just in my city, in other cities to it's the same. This is also something that a lot of people are

not talking about. But again, this is war and the bombings are so heavy and they're all being carried out with really advanced weapons, and it's just so hard. And when I talk to the people outside of Iran, the people in Europe, like some of my friends relatives, everybody's worried that what if one of my relatives, what if one of my one of my friends gets get killed randomly on the street. But because of this that people

are seeing this also on the news. At least I know this from my family because I was able to talk to them two nights ago. Everybody's staying home, they have enough food for a few weeks, and they're just watching the news. They don't go out, ye, they're just trying to stay safe. But at the same time, in major cities like for me, for example, the people who have a house outside of the city or in a village, or if they have relatives outside of the city, they

have moved out because it's it's it's generally safer. There are not many IRGC bases or like government government buildings or whatever in the villages and smaller towns, so this is also happening and people are trying to stay safe as much as possible. And yeah, this is this is something that's going on. And at the same time, when I talk to the people. I mean, I haven't been able to properly talk to anyone because the internet is

really bad. But like I talked to my family and they told me that the food prices are really, really really high, and it's really hard to buy food now because everybody's panicking and there are shortages, Like there's some items cannot be found, some like essential items like I don't know, oil, meat and rice and things like that. It's it's it's too hard to find in the market. Yeah, and a lot of people are going to the to the gas stations to get some gas and to be

prepared if something happens. But yeah, so this is also something that's going on, and people are worried about that what if it's it's going to get bigger, if it's going to scale it, so, like how are they going to deal with all these shortages. There is one more topic that I want to talk about. I also wrote about it a little bit earlier. I published some texts. It's the topic of ordinary soldiers. Yeah, explain that to people,

the civilians who are forced into the military service. This is also like a very sensitive topic because there are probably thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of young men who are about eighteen years old that are forced into the military service because it's mandatory in Iran, and they are forced into this service. And there are also in these military bases, and the military bases are being targeted NonStop, and there is a possibility, I mean not the possibility,

of course, it's surreal. Today one person, a young man from Curtison, was confirmed that he was killed, but I'm sure that there are more because we don't have a proper internet connection so we cannot like get all the information. But these military bases are being also targeted, and of course I think a lot of them might get killed or injured. And just from my own family, one of my cousins who is twenty four, he was also forced

into this because he wanted to open a business. And like in Iran, a lot of people also, maybe I should give a little bit of context, like in Iran, if you want to open a business, if you want to have a passport or things like that, you have to serve in the army and we'll give you that. So yeah, he just he was listed, like I don't know, about five months ago or so, and then he wasn't in a military base between Tabriz and Urmia and their

base was targeted. Luckily, the slipping quarters were not targeted. It was just where the commanders were I think staying. And yeah, I mean I couldn't talk to him, but he told my cousin who I called like a few days ago. He said that the moment that was bombed, everybody just ran out, and then everybody went back in and they took all their belongings and backpacks and they just left the military base and they went home without telling the wiser or something, and they were not there.

They're not going to go back there anyways. So this is also something that I am personally worried about, all those young men who are forced to be in the military basis and they are absolutely not a part of the regime. There are just civilians who are forced into this. So that that's also something that I think. It's it's not really discussed because the whole focus right now is

just on the major attacks. Which place was targeted or like which I don't know commander was killed or things like that.

because they have been raised in a state system. But I don't think that it's a particularly it's not useful to see everybody who lives in the Iranian state as part of the Iranian state. It doesn't actually give us a good grasp on reality. So perhaps you could explain first of all, perhaps explaining the structures of the Iranian state.

When it comes to like there are pro regime militias, right, there are the IRGC, and then we have like the leadership, many of whom are now dead, some of whom we know, some of whom we think are dead. But then we also have and I know you and I have spoken about this before, but it's worth explaining again, right, Like Iran is the ethnically diverse country, so we have people

who are ethnically excluded from power. We also have people within the majority ethnicity Persian people who are not pro ratime. So could you perhaps explain like those structures that exist And then you and I spoke about this a little bit before we were recording. But many of the facilities of the regimes, armed forces and repressive forces are right in the middle of town, right right next to civilian building.

So perhaps we could explain the consequences of that for civilians as bombs are falling on these facilities.

who approves everything. Yeah, there is normal parliament with the representative of the people, but at the same time, there is another type of religious parliament that the sides on the interests of the regime, which consists of some high level clerics or the molas, who are on a higher social level. And at the same time there is also a council of twelve people, six of them are molas, six of them are like lawyers and jurists that they are monitoring the let's say, the whole political process in

the government. But whatever happens when you see that, Yeah, this is on paper in theory, this is a system that could possibly work. But all of these organizations or these parts of the regions or layers of the regime that I mentioned, all of them they follow the Supreme Leader and whatever they do has to be approved by him.

it's not a militia that follows the leader. It's a whole organized and complicated structure that owns the economy, owns all the institutions in Iran and controls all of them. We're talking about the oil sector, we're talking about industry, we're talking about agriculture. I mean almost everything is owned

by them. And i ergy C is a network of countless high level commanders or even let's say non military person that are that are all working together and they are running the country somehow, and of course even if the leader is dead, they still have some structures to continue to carry carry on. And this is how how this structure is in Iran, and I think this is what makes Iran very very different from other states and

in the Middle East. And it's something that makes Iran also very different from what for example, if you want to compare it to Suda Mhussein system or in in Libya or in Syria, it's it's very different because the IRGC has put its hands and roots everywhere in every institution.

We're talking about schools, we're talking about universities, we're talking about hospitals, We're talking about anything that you can imagine, even in a post office, like we were talking about this earlier, so that there is like in every governmental institution, from universities to schools and hospitals. Bi ERGC always has

a specific office in every facility. It's supposed to recruit people to join the resistance, but in fact it's just a it's just an office to observe the people who are working there or the people who are going there for their daily matters. So they have control over everything, and that's what makes this regime very very structured and very hard to just topple in two nights. So that's why they are still resisting. There are still fighting back.

There are still even though Israel and America have destroyed the majority of their military basis and facilities, but they are still fighting back. This is also important to understand, I think, yeah.

removed a good number more of those religious leaders. What they did in Venezuela was that they found somebody who was no less repressive, but was amenable to doing what they wanted right specifically with resources, specifically with oil. You know, we run the risk of a similar thing happening in Iran, right of like someone within the IRGC being like, we will do what you need us to do with oil as long as you allow us to continue murdering the Iranian people as much as we wish. Like, that's a

real worry. They will find someone who they think they can do business with. That's what they wanted in Venezuela, right, run in Venezuela are different, they are both allied, but they're there very different countries. But that's a real worry for people.

But it's not really clear if USA and America have made a deal with him because he doesn't really have that social base that he claims to have. Yeah, and on the other side, there are the ethnic groups, especially Kurts, Balucci's and Ahuasi Arabs. They're like better organized compared to other ethnic groups. And then today we just saw that Trump has made phone calls with the kurt leaders of these parties and uh, the other parties in Iraqi, Curtisan.

This means something. And so yeah, it's it's not really clear that they're going to have a similar plan like Venezuela or they're going to have something completely different for for Iran. We're just waiting to see what's going to happen in the in the upcoming weeks, because it's just a few days that the war is going on. The entire region is.

another form of dictatorship. And they would say, yeah, we want anyone to be installed, but not this Sky, not this Pala. We don't want him. Anyone is better than him. Yeah, so this is also something and I think, yeah, probably if they want to install Raza Palavi, the ethnic groups will not accept it and there's going to be more resistance and therefore more wars.

the KDP and the p UK. I understand, this is like a lot of acronym coming at people, And so maybe we can just say like political parties in Iraqi, Kurdistan, Southern Kordistan. But that doesn't necessarily tell us anything. I think it's very easy. Again, Like there's this American media frame of analysis which sees groups in the Middle East as monolithic, right, the Kurds, as if they're like an entirely homogeneous entity with one political interest, which is not

the case. But like for America to fully remove this regime and it's Rael, it needs either a partner for uce or to be willing to commit thousands of its own soldiers to fight and know that hundreds of them will die, right like like did in a rack, I guess, like knowing what we know and knowing that there are these groups, right, and maybe it would be good to give people a primer on the Eastern Kurdistan resistance groups and the alliance that they've recently formed, Like where are

they standing right now? They released a statement yesterday, but can you explain that to a little bit to people?

cooperation between these parties and they finally announced that. Of course, two parties like the Komala and another branch, they did not join it because they had some disagreements, but that is also normal. So the thing is that these parties would definitely work together if the things are going to

escalate more. For example, if I want to say about a week ago, the Riza Palavi, he published a statement and he threatened Kurdish people that if they think about autonomy or I don't know, thinking about taking quote unquote parts of Iran's soil, we're going to use the army against them in the future. It's incredible that the first Kurdish official who answered to that statement was Abdullah Martai from the Komala, who was not a part of the coalition.

So that means that even though they have disagreements, but they are still trying to work together and help each other. I have talked to some people in the Kurdish parties. They are fully prepared for anything that could happen in the upcoming weeks or days or even months. I don't know,

they're fully prepared. And what I know is that they are telling me that they are prepared that the Israeli army and also the American army would bomb or destroy the military bases on the border and also the checkpoints so that it would be easier for them to enter. And probably if it's going to be bigger than that, then maybe they could take over the controls of the cities.

And what's really interesting is that they yesterday, these five parties, the coalition, published a statement and there were several points, but one of the points was that was really interesting for me was that they were calling on people to not damage any public buildings like banks, goals, I don't know, offices, and that means that probably there is a movement that they want to come back and take over all these

buildings and try to control the cities better. So this is also something and there is a lot of discussion on social media and people are all saying that, yeah, we are ready that if something happens, we will go in. And I think right now the situation is really complicated and like we don't know how people can actually enter yet. And you said that, yeah, if there is going to be a force that's ready to sacrifice of its members, I think there are. The Kurts are ready to fight.

They have been ready to fight for forever, for decades.

and I think maybe they have to sacrifice more. But one point here is that when I see what's happening, when I see that what is being said, that Trump is talking to the Kurdish parties, to the Kurdish organizations about the situation, one thing that I think about is that given the history of at least fifteen sixteen years of cooperation between America and the Kurts in Rajava, in in Syria and the fight again isis which was which was a great opportunity for Kurdish people, but at the

end Trump just let Kurts down and and didn't really support them against Turkey, against all these Jadist groups that are supporting Syria. So the question is that what if we fight against this regime, we we destroy the regime. I mean, it's not just us. I have to mention that the other ethnic groups are also ready. But what if all these ethnic groups fight this regime, they destroy

this regime? And what if Trump just brings someone really bad and some someone really useless, like Rizopalavi or other Iranian figures that of course are not after Kurdish people's interests. What if somebody likes that comes in power and then the same situation goes on and then we have to fight that system over and over again. So this is also something that I that I also think about it. But we still don't know what will happen is America's

exact plan. It could be something like Iraqi Curtistan, which could benefit the ethnic groups a lot. Of course, there's still gonna be civil war, probably there's gonna be instability, but at least the ethnic groups might be able to self determine, you know, like might be able to control their areas and get rid of that Iranian control to some extent, maybe not fully, but that is also something that could be possible. And of course there's going to

be killing. There's going to be a lot of civilians killed, and we know that already during all these bombings, many civilians are killed. We don't know how many exactly because there is no internet connection to make sure about the numbers or to investigate that. But of course all these Iranian government buildings are orgc bases, intelligence offices, or facilities that are all located in civilian areas, in in the cities, in the city centers all over Iran and also Curtistan.

So there's always going to be some civilians who are living there, who are walking around there and they get killed. So this is also something that's that's really painful. But I think our people really had have had enough and they were ready for this, and they were they knew that this is this was this was going to happen, and yeah.

liberate Kurdish people that took the SDF there. It was the battle against Isis and this idea of brotherhood of peoples right that they would liberate the Arab people who live there. Obviously that has resulted in these horrible things that we've seen over the last month. And then the thought of like, oh, well on, you just sent ten thousand more of your children to die so you can liberate people in Tehran and then we'll leave you again.

I was just thinking about, like a couple of years ago, I was in Solomonia and I went to the museum. You know that they have the Red Security building and they have like a very good history of the Anfhle the genocide against Kurdish people committed by the Bathist state, and then they have the nineteen ninety one uprising, and then they have a lot of commemoration of the battle against the Islamic State, and like for my entire life, like the Americans have been leaving Kurdish people to die

and then urging them to rise up again. And it's just I know, it's an incredible like revolutionary capacity and capacity for sacrifice, but it's also just very sad that Americans constantly expect Kurdish people to continue to sacrifice and then never for that bare end of the bargain.

from Iraq. And it's it's just the bitter truth that, yeah, apparently Curts are not considered as a long term partner for the us R and also the other Western countries. But like all these horrible things that are that have been happening to our people in the past one hundred years. I mean a part of it is, of course the result of the Western countries and colonization from the European

countries Great Britain, Russia and also America. But at the same time it's it's it's really important to not forget that majority of this tragedy that our people are are living in is also caused by by by Turks, Arabs and Persians. And by that I just don't mean the state. I also mean the whole structure in the Middle East

that has been prosecuting the Kurts. It's it's been centuries that are our people are trapped between these powers, the Turks, Prisians and Arabs that are also fighting each other, but then they bring all of their wars inside our homeland and then our people get killed and display and face

all the tragedies. So yeah, this is also our situation right now, and I don't know if it's going to be changed to a better situation because it's just so unclear that how the superpowers, how the major powers, the original powers are are planning for these things, and how

their interests actually matter. Like we talked about if if America, if Turkey or NATO and other Arab countries, we're not backing the new Syrian government, I would call it Syrian Arab government because that's how they identify themselves.

people ask me that what's going to be next. I think the next is going to be what America and Europe want. Like I'm sure that they don't care about what the people in Kurdistan or the people in Iran want. They just want to do whatever they want, whatever that benefits them. And of course the neighboring countries will also follow. From the Arab countries and definitely Turkey, they will follow the plan that benefits them. So the people are trapped

between these decisions. If the Iranian structure also remains, probably they would also change course and then cooperate with America or Israel or NATO or Arab countries only to remain in power and maintain their interests.

based in Iraqi, Kurtistan. I would also suggest to follow the social media pages belonging to the Kurdish parties like KDPI or Omala, just like their official pages on Twitter or It's for example, they post a lot of really good information. I would also suggest I think I also suggested in our last talk, there is this person called

Vahit Online. He is an independent journalist and he has like some really big platforms and he posts a lot of reliable information and videos about the locations and the things that are happening. And I would also suggest to follow some other journalists like Ali Jawan Mahdi. He is the manager and supervisor of the Voice of America. He also like he has several platforms and they post He posts a lot of updated information about what's happening. But

here's also something that I want to warn about. I would suggest people to not really believe in what they see on TV channels or media like Iran International, Manoto, TV, BBC version, because all these media have turned into a platform to do the propaganda for the monarchists, and they have been posting a lot of fake news, a lot of AI generated content, and it's been really damaging the whole course of the if I want to call it the revolution or the war or whatever like that's happening

inside Iron and Curtiston. So, yeah, these are the things that I can suggest so far.

very unlikely to. And you know, you could tell things are going rate in the news where this is the fun one and the fun one is us before we started recording, talking about who we think the sort of Nazi commis are they're going to put in charge of CNN is going to be. They're very wise. So things going very good.

patents on his stuff. And then and this is in New York. He's in New Jersey. Menlo Park famously is where his lab is. And what he starts doing other than making really really boring movies, he's a mid film producer. His movies are not that exciting, and at this point a movie is fifteen seconds to about a minute, often seen in a nickelodeon, like in a really small screen, or like in a small room. These are short films. Ninety nine percent of them are loss of time. Can't

we can't even watch these movies, right. But one of the things that he would do is he, because he had the patent on movie cameras, anyone who tried to film a movie, he would sue them, right. So it's eventually too hard to maintain this. So what he did is he teamed up with the other large Independence and Eastman Kodak, and they formed a thing. I think it's called the Motion Picture Company, which is unreferred to as the Trust, quote unquote, and the Trust just did this

at scale. So now instead of it just being him fighting against his competitors, it's all the leading movie filmmakers, all the leading filmmakers, and the literal film company will come down sue you sometimes even beat you up and like and shatter your cameras if you if you try to make a movie without their permission, without a license from them, and without their equipment.

that far away from New Jersey before. But you know, so jumping forward into the classical Hollywood period are more familiar with, there are sort of five major studioos and one of the ways that the major studios worked is that they had something called vertical integration, which is something we should all know about as we are living through times monopolies. Amazon is a classic example of vertical integration, as is Google. What vertical integration means is that you

own everything in the pipeline for movies. You have the offices where the producers work, You own the sound stage, you employ all the people who work on it, You employee the actors. You also then own the film that gets made. You own the cameras, You own the company that produces the film. Sometimes although tho's a instances, they

didn't always own those companies, those chemical companies. It's an on board, but you know, and then you own the movie theater where it showed, right, So like movie theaters before the forties, you would go to a RKO Pictures House. Arko is one of the early big ones, or a United Artists theater, and they would only show United Artists movies, right, So they would be an active competition with one another.

So your neighborhood would have you know, there'd be an MGM, there'd be an RKO, and you would go based on what movie was where. Then there's anti trust action done in the forties that breaks up these studios. The studio system sort of slowly collapses. They also then loses a lot of market share to television. This is a really pod ended history, but trying to do it as much as possible. So basically, so by the sixties or seventies,

what you have is a lot of independent producers. So the studios just become a brand and a sort of pot of money and often a sound stage. They keep the sound stages right. But then like distribution, becomes independent actors and like directors, they all are independent. They all have agents, right. It used to be that they would be hired by a company and they would just work

for that company. That's why you know classical Hollywood directors would make like sixty movies because they would just churn them out. They would just be like directing them show up, do it for two weeks, show up on the next one, do for two weeks, et cetera. Just the studio system.

So then by the sixties and seventies, it's starting to look more like what you have now, which is the studios are basically they're the homes of all the producers, the producers of people who connect the money and the talent, you know, and put it all together and package and deal the market it right, and that process. It seems like it's sort of a losing proposition. The business isn't doing super well until the emergence of the blockbuster with Star Wars, right so, Star Wars and Jaws and a

bunch of other movies in the seventies. We're going so fast right now and trying my best, but I'm sorry, this is.

it was going to be big. There was a star, but the studio was always gambling on how many how big it would be, how many people would pick it up, and then they had to sell it to the movie theaters, right, and then the films would circulate when they did well, they're print more. So movies would circulate for like a year, right, two years sometimes even. But with Star Wars and the day and date system that we have now, what they started doing was just putting it in every movie theater

in the country. You also get the emergence of multiplexes, white flight in the suburbs. I'm really going faster up trying. But the result is that movies get both more potentially valuable, but that value gets more and more concentrated in the early period of the of the release right in the early window. Opening weekend was not very meaningful until the eighties. Really, you know, late seventies, early eighties. As that happens, do you suddenly need more financing and you can make more

money off of bigger gambles. Simultaneously, the rest of the economy is going through financialization, right, which is a process that you've talked about on the show before.

lose money on a movie. Now the people who lost money on movies were like, you know, dentists from the Midwest who THEYD get to invest them. They'd be like, oh yeah, sorry, Like Threo's arcane deals. People still got rinsed. Obviously it was Hollywood. It was shady as well, but as so with the deregulation and with all this money flowing and with the integration of the home market, suddenly technology companies like Sony, and the emergence of of like

Lucasfilms that they also get really into computers. Lucas Turgocus famously is into the computer side of the business. All these different technologies get brought into the cinema at the same time as he gets see regulated. So companies starts snatching up these other film studios, right and so where once there were five studios, and then the sixties and seventies were actually got a ton of independent studios, a lot of really small ones, and they started getting gobbled

up by these bigger conglomerates. You know, Sony is the one that was also a mega corp in the eighties already that that would eventually go on to own to buy out a bunch of movie companies. The same thing is happening though with radio. With TV. The main thing that happens under the SEC regulation stuff is that they loosen up whether a movie studio can own a TV studio. They used to be fully separate, and then and and

broadcast rule changed. Broadcast rules changed, so studios could own a movie theater or you could own a movie company, a radio station and a TV station.

and the news media the way information is spread. Although I wouldn't you know, I would argue that the effects are still pretty perverse from the way social media and tech giants have control things. I think that's pretty pretty obvious.

Hollywood for ten years. Technically he's like an experienced producer. This man is forty three years old, which for like, you know, the CEO of a billion you know, he started with a generous loan from Daddy Larry. Let's just say and yeah, you know, I think people are very upset obviously because he's a Trump ally, right the Allisons or Trump allies. He has literally said, I'm gonna make more right wing movies, you know, like you know, the Daily Daily Wire. You know, they were all washing out,

but now they'll probably have contracts or whatever. You know, who knows. Like it's going to be money. But a lot of people are also saying that this is just for CNN, and that's actually not true. So a thing that is important to know is that the cable part of this deal Netflix was going to spin off the cable. The Discovery channel at CNN was going to spin off

all the cable. So if he just wanted CNN and he could have waited for the Netflix deal to go through, and he could have just bought it on the market for a steal. Because the thing about cable is it's

losing money. If you look at Okay, this isn't really dark fact, and I apologies everyone, but if you look at the rate of cable subscription costs, if you look at a meta aggregate data of it, the price of the annual subscription to cable goes up by the distributed amount of the previous year's subscription costs that were lost.

that's a franchise. You get TV shows, you get theme parks, you get you know, lunchboxes, toys, t shirts, you get resales, you get a reboot ten years down the line, right, you get licensing, so they want that. But but Netflix is really I mean, they hate movies. Netflix literally has a production design, a design philosophy of making movies that are designed for people who aren't looking at them, so

that the characters say what they're doing. I mean, there's a big article that came out about this a few weeks ago, like, yeah, Netflix is a nightmare company. So it's a real it's a real Cilly and carib this kind of situation. Yeah, right, Like you've got this fascist creep. But at least he like really thinks he likes movies, you know, Like I don't know anyway, the play being.

People are very upset about this news because it's happened to you because he's a Trump ally, there's this political angle they were making all this noise, they were begging Trump to do it. Y'all are thirty years late to this being a problem. Like I'm not trying to be like, I'm not trying to be like that whatever.

market of the film market, which is massive. I mean the market of anything. Eighteen percent the market is obscene hideous. Yeah, Disney in a bunch of the past years has run forty percent of the market world wide, world wide, not messic, So like we are already at this level of concentration, like the fact that it keeps going, Like, yes, it does mean there will be fewer and fewer movies. It does mean more layoffs. It means things are getting worse.

But you know, we've been here. You know what I'm saying. I think thirty seven. I think it's actually only thirty seven percent.

monopoly and we should do like trust busting again. And it's like probably, yeah, but we did this right, Like, we did this, we got rid of the monopolies, and then they came back, and it's like this is you know, this is this is the problem is that this is this is basically a structural problem of capital is this kind of resolidation and you can break up the monopolies, but they'll just reform. It requires you to win the

battle forever. And all the monopolies have to do is get like one fascist elected or get like like all they need is one Ronald Reagan and you just lose everything. Yeah, And it's like okay, like this this is a problem that can't be solved just by tinkering on the edges of the system. You have to actually destroy the conditions that make it possible. And those are regulatory conditions. Those are hold on why are people allowed to own this shit?

the product good. But like one of the things about the concentration of IP, and like one of the things that's like sort of scary about it's consolidation in general. And this is a fact that's really important to understand. When you own a bucket of intellectual property. Let's say you own Sesame Street, right, which is one that's not owned.

So it's a good example to use because it's weird when you own sesame Street, and if you start to make products of Sesame Street, it means that every idea that isn't Sesame Street but threatens to become more popular than Sesame Street is a threat. So it is if you own, if you own enough IP, is in your logical material interest to stop new ideas from being made,

because every new idea is competition. If you own the back catalog of Bob Dylan, for as like some of these investment firms, do you I think he's I think he has sold to Hypnosis or one of these big There are these big music investment firms that own the rights to all of these old songs. If you guys, If y'all remember, in twenty eighteen twenty nineteen, all movie trailers suddenly started having weird sad girl covers of like sixties and seventies pop songs. Do you remember this era?

Oh yeah, yeah, the sad guitargra and I was just like what happened in like Hollywood? Was there like some weird trend. No, what happened was these investment firms got hold of it, and if they can release a new cover version of a song, they hit the property rights twice, so they get it on the new they get it on the new play, and then people go back to the old ones they're reminded of it.

perfect rent that you never have to worry about. So all you have to do is buy enough musical IP and then try and get new artists who are hot to cover your old ip. So this is like this really weird esoteric seeming. You know, it's bailed on the division between particular recording copyrights and the copyrights of like

individual of the songwriting. It's like built on this sort of weird esoteric structure of intellectual property law, which like when you start talking about it, people's eyes literally roll in the back of their head, right, like they like fall over in a daisy pops up the cartoon. They're

just dead. That's not interesting. But like because of that, for five years, when you went to the grocery store, you would be in a weird, uncanny valley where you were hearing a song that you thought you recognized but was like slightly different.

Like that's there. That's their wettest dream, you know. And all that shit is going on in the backgrounde of your life, right like, I mean it's not it's it's but it's affecting the psychic atmosphere. It's producing nostalgia, it's producing all these affects that are rife for fascism. It makes people want to go back.

And this is something that you know, if you go back and read anyone who's doing any political analysis about World War One in the lead up to it and as it's happening, the thing everyone is talking about is is the consolidation monopoly capital, and I think you can argue maybe that the early eighteen hundreds had like a larger consolidation, just in the sense of, like I'm questionable as to whether this is just because it's too expensive to literally run a country, but like we haven't quite

returned to like the East India company has an army and they conquer countries periodically, but like I think it's just because that's too expensive and you'd rather just outsource that to the state.

true the World Trade Organization. One of the things that it did when you joined the WTO, and this was done by lobbyists, mostly film and pharma and chemical lobbyists from the US sense, if you join the WTO, you have to accept you don't not only have to accept their copyright and piracy law, you have to agree to build copyright courts and copyright police in your country Jesus Christ, so that if say Apple sees you making a fake iPhone, they have a liberal legal procedure domestic to your country

to force you to stop to smash those prices. Major corporations can get police in Vietnam to go in and light a warehouse on fire because it's full of faked goods, like without ever leaving the US, right, So yeah, yeah, the company's more dintributed through these world trade organizations.

enough stopping piracy. And it gives the White House unilateral capacity to create trade embargoes on people without going to Congress. Like this was all the tariffs, which also hurt your economy obviously, but even if they worked the way Trump imagines they do, like he already had that power and like other presidents have been using it for decades. Big visible sanctions like what they put on Iran or Venezuela

are a much more dramatic upscale. But the priority watch list, they can just threaten to upgrade you from on the watch list to a priority on that and you will watch countries fold entirely on trade policy, Like it's crazy. So, like, one of the things that's interesting about this moment and about the Trump this moment is that they're ripping apart their own infrastructure. Yeah, because they literally just don't understand how it works.

pretty unimpressive guy. But like, you know, like other than internal politics, which is what all CEOs are good at anyway, you know, like these these these companies were already good at this, and like what has happened is that a wing of the capitalists who are really bad at it and really resentful because they're all sort of like the

David Allison's in the world. They're all the resentful fail sons of wealth who you know, they want more power and more respect and they don't appreciate how much their shit is already built on the very thing they claim to want to do.

devoured by this. This is like well, yeah, like this is what happens when you set up a system like this, Eventually there's going to be a bigger fish who's just going to devour you because they have, for example, Oracle behind them, which is just an amount of capital that like outside of like Disney, you can't have that kind of capital, right, And like with Trump, it's like, yeah, you finally created a monster that is large enough to

shatter the extremely della kit and complicated system that you did. And it's also just doesn't understand it.

world by dollar, if not by number. By number, they've already long surpassed the US. Yeah, but the way that Chinese film companies work is like they're all pretty nakedly financial companies like ten Cent and Ali Baba, right, and like the like these are companies, they're just already from other sectors, and they're just like we have cash, we use the cash to make a movie, yeah, which is

what the studios always did too, Right. I want to be really clear, like I don't want to romanticize, but like you know, that's where it always was, right, And it's just that like in the turn of the century when Hollywood was being made, industries were just more divided.

in the world. They had the Ministry of Culture under Gerbels, Right. And I think when we talk about Nazi propaganda, we think about triumph for the will, and we think about stuff like Juden Zeus, right, like extremely horrifying anti Semitic bullshit. Yeah, extremely horrifying anti Semitic movies. There were two of them in the ten years that Gerbels ran the un which is the film company that made movies for Germany. The vast majority, the vast majority of films under the Life

were frothy comedies and musicals and adventure stories. Because the principle that Girbels operating on was called the orchestra principle, and he believed that you should just actually art should just be reduced to creating feelings. It should be totally de intellectualized, and then very little of that art remains. Those movies are mid. You know, the movies made by Utha are not good, like even the ones that are not offensive, they're just mid. But they all do the

same thing. They all work together around a principle of certain principles around family and romantic love and domestic life, most of it inoffensive in and of itself. And so I think when we think about Ellison taking over, I think we imagine, you know, as we were joking about at the beginning, shit like the Daily Wire, anti woke, Cinderella or whatever the fuck. Yeah, and I allowed to cuss, I'm doing so much of it.

Part of what's so funny about the Daily Wire is it's like like they come for Disney, like you can't do anything to make a more fascist pot Like Disney entertains people and makes the flash as populous, like they're just bad filmmakers and that kind of matters.

But things can get worse. But like, also there is the actual object, the actual film object exists, and like part of what has been hard about Hollywood, the reason they've built these monopoly structus, the reason they've built these pease structures is because because audiences are fickle, and that's annoying, and you can't just like force stuff down their throats and they're not going to just like buy something for sure every time, and you have to sort of seduce them,

right like, it's it's you have to you have to make something they want to see. Right The MCU was unstoppable until it stopped, and now no one likes it and it's really annoying, right like, and they still make their money back on the MCU, Like they're doing fine. No, do not play a violin for Kevin Feige. He's doing fine. You know, he's crying on his third jot, you know.

But like, but so I guess what I'm saying is that like, is that, like, as we enter into more and more naked versions of this, what it should help us do you, rather than think, oh my god, all is lost? Is to reflect on how we got here already, How often we were already here under liberalism, under Biden, under just regular capitalist conditions, how often we've already been here, reevaluate the way we think about what good culture could look like, and then start to move.

like it. And you know, like the wachowskis like have a studio now where they're pumping out a bunch of trans movies, and like, you know, we're getting like Manhunter, and we're getting like a whole bunch of other stuff. And you know, the thing I said a few years ago I think is even more desperate and true now is that like transfilm is one of the last things fighting for the existence of film as a medium and not as a way to sell you toys and like fifteen dollars popcorn.

can make a movie good again. Movie has never been good. There can be a new future. We're movie good.

any of that. If you're if you're interested in how Disney destroyed the world and in the ways that we've been talking about here today, can read way more about it.

joining all Democrats in the vote. Hillary Clinton was asked about Pizzagate and UFOs during her congressional testimony on Jeffrey Epstein. More on that next week, in a special episode, God and Netflix declined to raise their offer to buy Warner Brothers,

resulting in Paramount winning the bidding war. FCC chairman Brendan Carr held CNBC that the Paramount deal would be approved quote unquote pretty quickly and that Netflix quote would have had a very difficult path saying the Paramount deal is quote a lot cleaner, does not raise all the same

types of concerns unquote. More on that in the episode before this one insane, he just said that outline and yeah, on Thursday, February twenty sixth, almost a year after Mahmoud Khalil was first attained, ICE agents arrested another Columbia student in the early hours of the morning. Shortly after six am, five playing clothes agents from the Department of Homeland Security showed up outside a Columbia apartment building without a warrant,

demanding to be let inside. The agents gained entry by falsely telling the building's superintendent that they were police searching for a missing child, even bringing pictures of this fake kid. The agents used this lie to enter into the apartment of twenty nine year old student Ellie Agaheva, where she was then arrested and taken off campus. After being detained, Agaheva posted on Instagram quote, dhs illegally arrested me. Please help.

This same day, Mayormamdanni happened to be meeting with President Trump in the White House regarding federal funding for the Sunnyside Yards housing project. During this meeting, the mayor voiced opposition to ICE raids and concerned about the detention of the Columbia student. Earlier that morning.

end up covering this twice. And we've got a lot to address today. This is breaking news right before we released the podcast. Christine Noam, the Secretary of Homeland Security, is going to be leaving that job at the end of March, and she will be replaced by current United

States Senator for Oklahoma Mark Wayne Mullin. Nom will be moving into another job where she will be the Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas, which is a security initiative for the Western hemisphere that Trump is planning on telling us more about this weekend. Mullin, for those aren't familiar, is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He has been in the House of Representatives for ten years before he was in the Senate for the last three years,

and he used to be a professional mma fighter. Secondly, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty has announced an investigation into potential misconduct by federal officers in the state, and response DHS has claimed that quote federal officials acting in the course of their ties are immune from liability under state law. This isn't true in legal terms, right, Federal officials can be prosecuted if their actions weren't necessary or proper, or were not in the course of their duties. So this

pertains to the supremacy clause of the Constitution. Right, and there's a two part test for supremacy clause immunity aid the federal officials actions authorized under federal law and be that they are quote necessary, improper in the execution of their duties as a federal officer. I will link in the sources of our document to a tenth Circuit case

on this. The case was about some Federal Wildlife officers who had crossed on to private land during a wolf coloring operation in Wyoming, and then Wyoming A tempted to prosecute them for trespassing, right, so we can see like a previous example of this, but it's not true that they have complete immunity from state laws, which is what's important here. I want to move on to Iran, just like most of the US military has done. But thank you,

it works so hard on these Yeah. So we made a whole episode about this, which came out on Wednesday of this week, and I don't want to recap what we said there. That is why we make lots of episodes so you can go into depth on things. So I will for the most part be picking up on that by updating people and things that have happened in the

twenty four hours since we recorded that. Firstly, it seems that the attacks, or E said timing was heavily driven by Israel, who were likely acting on intelligence about the whereabouts of Harmoni. The attacks occurred in the daytime, which is pretty unusual, like normally they want to time these things with moon phase. They want to do them at night just to make them safer for any of the

piloted aircraft that they're using. Right. I also wanted to point out so that the source of this Israel claim, let's start there, comes from the bid response forty seven account. I guess I described that as like a White House affiliated Twitter account. I can't think of the Yeah, it's one of the accounts at the It's not White House, but it's one of the accounts that the Trump administration runs, one.

seems like the initial push came from Israel, right. I'd also like to add that Tafran is getting bombed very heavily as we record this, something I think is missing in that discourse. We were actually going to have an episode about the water crisis in Iran this week. For obvious reasons, we made another Iran based episode. But Iran

is critically low on water. Lake Umir, which was the largest lake in Asia, actually gone now from damning from draining of aquifers, and Tehran is sitting on top of an empty aquifer, which leads to greater potential for damage, I guess with some of these large bombs that we're seeing drop there, right.

lot of civil infrastructure. This is just so much more of a problem, and it makes the odds of the end result of all this being a failed state in the region that leads to a humanitarian crisis on scale of the refugee crisis we saw during the early stages of the Syrians of a war much likelier.

is not helping that. I want to move on to these claims that we have seen in the past twenty four hours about a Kurdish partner force in eastern Kurdistan, right, And in Kurdish that would be called Roja Lat that would be Western Iran, right.

time that we talked about Barak. It was in the context of a leaked proposal for peace between Russia and Ukraine that appeared to be essentially a list of Russian demands but was not present was presented as a US proposal. I will try and remember what week we talked about that and the so that link in case people want to go back, right like, I've spent a lot of time appointing out on various websites how bad this piece was.

It was atrocious in its understanding of Kurdish movements. For instance, it it listed Talabani and Bazani as leaders of Iranian Kurdish factions. What yeah, Like. I think it's important to note at this point that like media perceptions of the Middle East are often formed by people whose understanding is eclipsed by the introductory part of the Wikipedia article on a given topic. Vastly like that's not an exaggeration.

right now. Right there has been significant bombing along the road from Halabd to Kamanche right, which would be like a road that you would use if you're planning to move some people in that way. In theory, the KDP and the p UK, so they are the two major Kurdish factions in a rack, have unified their Peshmerger. Peshmerger means those who face death. They are the armed forces

that are affiliated to the two Kurdish political parties. This is really kind of a rhetorical construct because they have regional commands which effectively mirror the areas where the KDP and p UK and control anyway, but they have unified payroll, which is interesting. It is also worth noting that pro Iran groups inside Iraq have been targeting Peshmerger with drone attacks. Both sides in its conflict are bombing Iraq cration now, which really does suck for people in Iraq.

very heavily involved with Iran. During the fighting in Mosul, you had Peshmurger, you had Iraqi Army soldiers generally from Baghdad, and then you had the PMFS, the Popular Mobilization Forces, and these were all Iran back militias and traveling, especially as I was with Puriage, you had always be really careful in the PMF positions because you never knew what

would happen, because again they are enemies. They were tied together fighting ISIS, but they are not allied forces and they have a history of fighting each other.

far as not doing war crimes goes. I also received confirmation today that Barzani and Talibani spoke with Iran's foreign minister, so they've spoken with both Trump and the Iranian foreign minister. Kubad Talibani, who's a deputy Prime minister of Kurdistan, not the same person. It's Baffel Talabani, the leader of the PUK, made a statement to say that the Kurdistan region was not involved in the conflict. I think it's very unlikely that we will see large Peshmrger groups from northern Iraq

southern Kurdistan entering Iran in the near future. I do think it's interesting that Reviede got this piece leaked to him because things don't generally get leaked because one person has a crisis of conscience. It does happen sometimes, but

in events like this, it is normally a choice. And this particular story leaves the Kurdish people in a very difficult position because it puts a target directly on them for the Iranian regime, right, and they can fight or not fight, but they have been singled out as a group that is going to be the ground forces of this Israeli and US aggression, and what that means is they will be singled out for oppression at home, whether

or not they fight. That leaves them in a place where they might have to chose to fight right or they might fight but not through their own choosing. There has been for some time an alliance for some time. I think twenty second of February is when it was made of five Kurdish groups, five Iranian Kurdish groups. These are Rather than saying them like phonetically, I had to read out the initials. People want to look them up pjak Pak, KDPI, and then these two groups have names

not initials. There are two of the three parts of Kamala and Hubbat. It is more likely that these groups, specifically KDPI, will be willing to engage. We do know that Trump spoke to Mustafa Hidri that he's a KDPI leader. I have had sources that suggest that some Kurdish and some non Kurdish groups have at least the intention or desire to enter Iran and fight. I'm not really comfortable naming, particularly which ones I'd want DEADA sourcing on that. Yeah,

what they plan to do is are unclear right. None of these Roja La groups are massive, like numerically, they don't have the manpower. However, ITV reported that weapons have been stuck piled in eastern Kurdistan for a while, and as we saw in in rajavers as we saw in southern Kokistan and the Islamic State times like, their ability to scale up their forces pretty rapidly is something that the Kurds have retained for a long time.

of those people are dead. That's not really the same case with the Kurdish movement, because at any given time, three quarters of the Kurdish movement is not you know.

There's a pretty good odds that you wind up with a sizeable Kurdish force, and it would very likely be supported by Western at least initially by Western munitions in that chunk of Iran. Like, that's a very possible outcome.

Arabian golf, or the Gulf of a Man. This briefing was interesting because they explicitly made the comparison to the invasion of Iraq, not an invasion, not a war that has the greatest rep in recent months and years.

of strike missiles for the first time. They call them prisms and something called Lucas strones, which are kind of interesting to me. They are the result of the United States capturing and reverse engineering an Iranian Shaheed drone. The Shaheed is like a it sounds like a lawn mower, very distinctive, sound like I've heard them flying over and yeah, but they are one way attract drone. They're essentially a

sort of guided munition. They're very cheap, and they've been very effective for Iran and for Russia, who now makes has licensed production of these drones. So it's interesting that the US is openly just saying, yeah, we saw that and we copied it.

laste hundred years. It's an incredibly effective platform that seals up an enormous number of holes that have always existed in modern militaries, like the capacity gap that it allows, particularly a country like Aron to seal, right, because with enough shaheeds you effectively can mimic not just the assassination capabilities of like bigger drones, but something like close air support in a way that's very hard to interdect with traditional air power.

hit with dumb musicians or with less intelligent munitions. The downside of this is that it's hard to make enough munitions to maintain on a war footing in peacetime because in peacetime it's kind of a waste of money as an industry, and so capitalism doesn't tend to unless there's a war on reward companies for producing the kind of like munitions and number in the kind of number you would need to fight a modern war, and so whenever one does start up, you wind up with this situation.

We're seeing this that we saw this with Russia and Ukraine.

We're still seeing it in Russia and Ukraine. And we saw it in World War One two where very suddenly everyone runs out of ammunition, right and prior to the United States going to I'm going to say, going to war with Iran again, like literally about a week before, there was an article that dropped in the i think the Wall Street Journal about how Trump's top generals were really worried that the United States did not have enough munitions to sustain conflict with Iran for any significant period

of time. And there's immediately in reports as soon as this started that that is, in fact exactly what's fucking happening. There's a good piece on CNN Politics written by Sean Lynngas, Kylie Atwood and Isabelle Khrushudian, and it describes, or at least it talks to conversations with someone at the Pentagon saying that the United States is burning through long range precision guided missiles at an unsustainable rate, and this is not just to attack Iranian positions, but also to stop

Iranian ballistic missiles. Quote from that source, Each intercepts represents hundreds of hours of training, readiness, and technology all coming together to work. Is designed so that means you don't have an infinite number of these, whereas Iran is capable of producing a significant number of the ballistic missiles and the drones that these precision munitions are needed to shoot down.

Iran's producing something like one hundred ballistic missiles a month, and had a stockpile going into this, we can build six or seven interceptor missiles in a month, right, So obviously we're going into this with stockpiles, and Trump has claimed that US munition stockpiles have never been higher or better, and that the war could go on forever very successfully just using these supplies, but he didn't specify what munitions he was referring to, and all of the information coming

out suggests that we are, like the seventh Fleet has basically burned through its supply of advanced munitions. There's been confirmation because the IERGC claims they took out two THAD batteries, and I don't take the IERGC at their word, but we did get local confirmation in at least one case that one of those batteries was disabled, and it seems very likely based on some satellite imagery that both were damaged.

How damaged they are is very hard to say. We're talking generally the radar array that you use for the missiles has been hit, but we've only got like eight of these things. These batteries are like not just our most best protection we would have from like submarine based

nuclear missiles, but our best anti missile systems period. And we're in the process of peeling away the fat batteries that we've got in Korea to bring into the Middle East to continue to protect Israel and to protect our forces, and the fact that any of them may have been seriously damaged or lost is a serious problem for the

United States. I want to continue from that CNN piece here they're interviewing Colonel Mark Gunzinger, who's a retired military colonel and the director of Future Concepts and Capability Assessments at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. He basically made this claim that, like, since the United States has established air superiority early on in this conflict, quote, there's not such a need for the higher end, very long range

standoff weapons. I don't know that I agree with him on this because it seems like we're using some of those munitions now, but he's primarily talking about we don't need to use as discriminating of weapons systems now. Instead of using our super advanced precision guided munitions, we can use stuff like jadams, which we have a lot more. We have a huge stockpile of jade m's of various

sizes and small diameter bombs. The problem is that these are not nearly as advanced in terms of their guidance capabilities, and the civilian casualties related from using these are much

much higher. So we're hitting a point where we're running out of precision munitions, and it seems very clear that, at least among military thinkers, the attitude is that's fine, because we'll just use these bigger weapons that kill more civilians, and yeah, that's what you should look forward to in the next stages of this conflict.

Jesus Christ. He said that quote President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran, to cause armageddon and mark his return to Earth. I am not a big Bible understander, but Garretton Davis, a regular resident Bible person, please comment if you want to. I don't think this is good, is my take on that. I think it's a great way to be going around foreign policy.

totally different in Iran. Like it's the Iranian people, the Ranian like resistance. The Iranian protests had not taken territory. They had not swung large chunks of the Iranian military. The military and the regime were still in control of the country and nothing has changed in that regard. So if you're going to knock out the regime, you have to send in the fucking marines. That's the only way, and that's I think what's going to happen at some point.

sourcing your news. Yeah. I just wanted to make that very clear.

water way would be set quote a blaze. Now, for CNBC, there's about thirteen million barrels of oil a day that flows through the strade of four Moose's thirty one percent of all sea worn crude flowed. The total like impacted oil production and distribution from this is about it's about a fifth of the world's oil supply total that is being impacted by this. Liquefied natural gas is also being massively impacted because of yeah, the places where a whole

bunch of natural gas and oil are produced. This is a very, very significant blow to the world's energy supply and one of the reasons why, even if you don't care like the US does and about, you know, obliterating Ibronian schoolgirls with bombs, this war is a terrible idea because you're suddenly losing access to a fifth of the world's oil supply. Now, Trump has repeatedly said that this strait is not open. The RGC has repeatedly said that

it is closed. Trump also yesterday that we're recording this on Wednesday, said that the US will escort tankers if necessary through the straight with US Navy ships. The other major issue here is that no insurance company will ensure any ship going through this, because why on earth would you do that. And Trump has also ordered the government to ensure these tankers. And this has stopped the massive rise in oil prices a little bit that was happening

at the beginning of at the beginning of the conflict. However, I don't know why it stopped the rise in oil prices, because this won't work. You can't just escort oil tankers through the Strait with American battleships and have them not Like, do you know how big an oil tanker is and how slow they are? Like, there's no way militarily that you can actually move oil tankers through here. You just can't.

It's too easy to hit with literally any munition. So the sort of American markets don't seem to have figured out that you obviously cannot escort oil tankers through the trade of permus. Where people have figured this out are the Asian markets, particularly South Korea and Thailand, where both of their stock index has had their circuit breakers triggered, which is the emergency system may have in place when

the market is collapsing too fast all trading halts. South Korea's index lost twelve point zero six percent yesterday, which is the single largest drop that the market has ever experienced. Yeah, it's it's it's it's really bad. The Chinese indexes have been okay, but both Japan and Taiwan we're down between three and four percent, which is still also quite bad.

Now South Korea and Thailand specifically, the reason that these two countries are having just sort of apocalyptic market collapses is that these two countries are extremely reliant on imported oil. And you know, there's this tendency to think about oil as just liquid money, and it's not. You do actually have to use it to power things, and a stificant portion of the of both the Thai and the South Korean economy are sort of heavy industrial things that require

this oil. These countries are now in very dire straits. And the only way that this could stop is if somehow Trump wins the war very very quickly and be able to reopen the Straight, which I don't think is particularly likely. So this is probably just going to intensify. Yeah, you could call it a dire straight.

assets being moved out of Spain. Trump has responded to this by I was going to quote out to Zerra, quote round the Zeerra. He said he had told his he had told his Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bestet, to quote cut off all dealings with Spain. We're going to cut off all trade with Spain. We don't want anything to do with Spain, the president said.

the Spanish government immediately said, no, we didn't. What are you talking about. Yeah, so they're just lying about stuff again. It's great.

at birth unquote. After this law was passed, the state sent letters to trans people informing them their license was now invalid, effective immediately, including to at least one transperson who did not change their gender marker but recently changed her legal name. State officials say about one thousand and

seven hundred license holders were affected. The law also invalidates updated birth certificates and prohibits anyone born in Kansas from updating the gender marker on state issued per certificates and

driver's license in the future. This same law also prohibits trans people from using the public restrooms on government property that alignce with their gender, and allows private citizens to sue someone suspected of being trans in the quote unquote wrong restroom in a government building for damages totaling one

thousand dollars. Two trans Kensons and the a Solu have filed a lawsuit claiming the new law SB two four four violates the Kansas Constitutions protections for personal autonomy, privacy, the quality under the law, due process, and freedom of speech.

the race. This is still unclear, but it was a very close race between those two and one other person that was going to go to a runoff due to redistricting. Two Democratic incumbents House Representatives Al Green and Christian Menefee battled over a new district and a close race that will now also go to a runof off sim Goo's representative Julie Johnson, and former Representative Colin Alred, who dropped out of the Senate race to run for this newly

redrawn district. Neither of these two were able to reach a majority, so that race will also head to a run off. Incumbent Dan Crenshaw lost the primary, yeah, to the Republican challenger Steve Toath, who was backed by the party's far right an Tucker Carlson is significantly to the right of Dan Crenshaw. Yeah, he's as fun as it is to see Crenshaw go down. He's getting replaced by someone that is actually worse.

in December. Crockett did not concede the night of the election. Has since conceded, but did not concede election night, citing issues at voting precincts and dueling court orders that sowed confusion come election day. Republicans in Dallas County and Williamson County switched the rules from county wide centralized polling locations to an assigned precinct system where voters can only cast

their ballots at one specific location. After reports of people being turned away from their regular polling locations on election day and being told they had to travel to their assigned precinct to cast their ballot, both Crockett and tall Rico advocated to expand voting hours in these counties to compensate for the confusion and ensure all the votes intended

to be cast on election day would be counted. Judges in Dallas and Williamson County extended voting hours to nine and ten pm, respectively, but later that night, in a ruling just before eight thirty pm, the Texas Supreme Court blocked the lower court's order and instructed Dallas and Williamsman County to separate any ballots cast by voters who entered the line after seven pm and marked them as provisional ballots.

After a request by Turn General Ken Paxton, who claimed his office was not properly notified of the extended voting hours, Paul Adams, the Dallas County election administrator, confirmed that these separated ballots would not be counted, pending further legal challenges. At her election night watch party, Crockett said that she had quote no idea how it is that clerks are going to know who was in line by what time. I can tell you now that people have been disenfranchised quote.

On Wednesday morning, Crockett did concede the race, but told The New York Times quote the Democratic Party should absolutely prepare for the worst and get some things litigated right now. People will not turn out because of what's happened. In my opinion, especially if no one fights for their votes to be counted unquote.

Sanders voters. If you look at the twenty twenty presidential primary, and that gives you a little bit of a peak into kind of what these two candidates are presented with Crockett serving on the Kamala Harris campaign definitely more of a k Hive esque candidate, and Tall Rico a little bit running off of the kind of Bernie Sanders progressive coat tails, a little bit not coat tails, but like using that sort of playbook as more of like a relatable working class guy, less of like an established mid

Democrat like Crockett sort of branded herself as Tall. Rico is a former school teacher who served in the state House since twenty eighteen. Fought against Christian nationalism and a bill mandating the Ten Commandments be displayed in classrooms, calling the bill unconstitutional, Unamerican, and deeply un Christian. In his past legislation lowering the cost of prescription drugs, He's like

a progressive Christian. That's kind of I guess the best way to describe him as he Yeah, frequently went viral the past three years for clips of him, you know, arguing in the Texas State House, you know, arguing for progressive points of view while like quoting Bible versus that sort of thing. For this campaign of his, he was

running on affordability and cost of living. That was the real focus of this campaign of targeting the richest one percent and giant corporations, making billionaires and corporations quote unquote pay their fair share of taxes, raising federal minimum wage to fifteen dollars, expanding child and earned income tax credits. He's opposed state legislation restricting gender a firming healthcare, including

for people under eighteen. In September, right after he announced his candidacy, Tellerico, who's a member of the LGBTQ Caucus, responded to a question about trans athletes like this.

minority destroying this country is the billionaires. Trans People are one percent of the population, Undocumented people are one percent of the population, Muslims are one percent of the population. We are all focused on the wrong one percent. Trans People aren't taking away our healthcare. Undocumented people aren't defunding our schools. Muslims aren't cutting taxes for themselves and their

rich friends. It's the billionaires and their puppet politicians. And so we need not only the media but all of us to focus on the real problem at hand.

to our safety unquote. Part of where this sort of language I think falls apart is that when the Trump administration claims that it's deporting gang members and criminals like what we saw with people sent to Seacott, that also includes regular people. That also includes our neighbors. And I

think that is one slight fault in this messaging. It's going to be interesting with him running in the general now, you know in Texas where the border is a big issue there, and a lot of his immigration stuff definitely is not going to at least currently is not as far to the left as as some other progressive Democrats, and this is something that he is currently being pushed on, especially after winning. Progressive advocates are pushing him on Ice specifically,

as well as some stuff on Israel. And Gaza. Telleryco Is advocated to stop the sale of quote unquote offensive weapons to Israel while still funding the I Dome and defensive weapons. Talked about trying to find a way to

make sure that defense weapons cannot be used offensively. But he does recognize that Gaza is an extremely important issue and said in an interview quote one of the primary reasons the Democratic Party lost young voters in particular last election was our party's failure to recognize the moral disaster in Gaza. And I hope that we have leaders who

recognize that mistake. I think that's all I need to say of regarding that the generals not until November, and if it is a Cornyn, that will be a much much harder race considering he's an incumbent versus Paxton, who has a lot of avenues for attack. For someone like tall Rico, who can lean on his like a Christian charm to it attract voters both in rural areas as well as lean on his support among Hispanic voters as

demonstrated in the primary. Mia, you have one final thing to add based on the primary elections in North Carolina.

kind of success with like far left positions. Not that I think basic respect for trans people ought to be far left, but it's clearly not a centrist dim position.

we're going to kill it here. And I think this is sort of the start of potentially that in North Carolina, where well, this isn't the start, but hopefully we're seeing like the culmination of a whole bunch of ways of activism and organizing amobialization that can kill this kind of anti trans politics in the place where it was born. The first bathroom.