← It Could Happen Here
It Could Happen Here
Executive Disorder: Portland Shooting, the FED, Visa Pause & Turtle Island Liberation Front
00:41:39
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- [00:00]
A
This is an iHeart podcast.
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B
Guaranteed Human.
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A
This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by James Stout, Mia Wong, and maybe Sophie Lichterman.
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B
Maybe, yeah.
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C
They'Ll send you first name.
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B
I'm always here. I just don't necessarily have anything to add. Because you're all so good at your jobs.
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A
Aw, no, no. We love when Sophie has something to contribute to this show. So what should we talk about first?
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B
Let's do some quick updates from last week. As we mentioned in the episode description, last week we recorded prior to an incident that happened in Portland where to two people were shot by Border patrol or ice. Very unclear. There was not a lot of information given out and the way that the situation unfolded, the way that DHS said it, that there was a targeted stop of two people and they resisted arrest. So of course, what do they do? Just shoot into a car and those people drove away and then quickly called for help and then went to the hospital. We really don't know anything further than that. I watched many press conferences from Oregon and Portland officials, including the governor and the mayor, talking about the situation. Everybody's pretty horrified by it locally. But that's not the story we were getting from dhs. I can read the statement if you guys want.
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C
Okay, yeah.
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B
Since Robert's not here. Robert was. Was at CES but was also following the story very closely and did some reporting on his blue sky, if you want to go back and look at that. But the statement from DHS said at 02:19 PST US Border Patrol agents were conducting a targeted vehicle stop in Portland, Oregon. The passengers of the vehicle and and target is a Venezuelan illegal alien affiliated with the transnational gang Trende Agua prostitution ring and involved in a recent shooting in Portland. The vehicle driver is believed to be a member of the vicious Venezuelan gang Trend. They love to just throw that out there. When agents identified themselves to the vehicle occupants, the driver weaponized his vehicle and attempted to run over the law enforcement agents. Fearing for his life and safety, an agent fired a defensive shot. The driver drove off with a passenger fleeing the scene. The situation is evolving and more information is forthcoming. That was on January 8th at about 5pm Pacific. And that's their take. That's their like go to move. The excuse for randomly shooting at a car is that they were weaponizing the vehicle towards the agent. We really don't know much further than that. Mia, do you have anything you want to add?
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D
Yeah.
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E
So I think we should make two things clear. One, both of the people who were shot have survived, which is good.
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C
Yeah. Yes.
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E
It's also worth noting that. So the day we are recording this, on the 14th, there was a report released by Del Cameron and Ryan Shapiro at Wired talking specifically about how they got a bunch of intelligence documents from the Trump administration of. About Trend Agua. And to briefly summarize your article, I'm just going to quote the subtitle of it because it gives a good representation of what is in the actual intelligence documents.
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B
That's all the info we need.
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E
Yeah. Hundreds of records obtained by Wired shows thin intelligence on the Venezuelan gang in the United States describing fragmented low level crime rather than a coordinated terrorist threat. So they could barely even find existence of this group in the United States. These two people. I am 99. I think I would, I would, I would stake my life on the. On none of the stuff in that report about them being in this Venezuelan criminal organization being true. Almost everything that has come out of Homeland Security, as we've talked about with every other previous shooting, almost everything that comes out of Homeland Security is a lie. So, yeah, we will probably in the coming weeks figure out what actually happens, but unfortunately right now we're relying on a combination of Portland government officials who are somewhat more reliable, and the Department of Homeland Security, which is utterly unreliable.
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A
Yeah, I do have one thing to note here as for what the local officials in Portland are saying. Portland Police Bureau Chief Bob day started a Jan. 10 press conference by saying, quote, recently I read the Declaration of Independence for the first time, unquote, and then stated that the two victims of the shooting have, quote, some nexus to involvement with Trend. And then on January 11, Multnomah County District Attorney Nathan Vasquez was interviewed on Kaidu News and said that he believes Trenda Agua is active in Portland, but he could not confirm that his office has any criminal cases against the gang. The Department of Homeland Security has identified the people who were shot, saying they are affiliated with Trend, the Venezuelan gang, and are connected to other crimes in Portland. Does your office have any cases against these individuals?
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F
You know, this is all. These are all things that we're going to be looking at and going through very carefully as we evaluate the case. One, to make sure that if there are other pending matters out there that they're taking care of, but also just to make sure we get a full picture of what's going on in the situation.
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A
Do you have any knowledge of whether Trindre Aragua is active in Portland and Multnomah County.
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F
It's certainly something that we have seen and we are, we are working on with our local law enforcement. We have, we have seen them in our area. They are one of kind of a host of different groups or individuals out there that are engaged in criminal activity. And it's something that we're working on.
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B
Just a lot of biased disinformation and misinformation. We don't actually really know what happened. But I am grateful that those folks did not lose their lives. Unlike Renee Goode.
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E
Yeah, yeah. And I also briefly want to mention here about Renee Goode. There's been an attempt by the Department of Justice. A bunch of people at the Department of Justice have resigned rather than attempt to prosecute Renee Goode's wife.
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A
Six high level prosecutors have resigned in the past week.
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E
And this, this has been a very, very standard reaction from law enforcement when they don't kill someone or when there's someone else on the scene. A few months ago, ICE shot a woman in Chicago. She thankfully survived, but they also charged her afterwards. So this is a, this is a very, very centered practice. And they are right now trying this on Renee Goode's wife after she watched her fucking wife get killed in front of her.
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C
Yeah. So I know people have also been waiting for updates on Iran. We have an episode that came out. It will have come out on Wednesday, two days before this comes out. So if you'd like to know more about what's happening in Iran, we had a really excellent talk with Gorain, and I would suggest you go back and find that episode. And I wanted to update people on what is happening in Syria, I guess specifically northern Syria right now. So the two neighborhoods, Sheikh Maqsood N Essafriyah, those are both neighborhoods in Aleppo. Right. They're sometimes characterized as Kurdish neighborhoods, but like Yazidi, people live there. There are various Christian people living there as well. Right. Like it's not 100% Kurdish. I think sometimes there's a tendency among people who write about Syria to see things as ethnic monoliths. And I think that is not the way to approach these things. But anyway, both of those neighborhoods have now been fully seized by the Syrian Transitional Government. Some SDF fighters were bused back to Qamishlo, which is the capital of the Aanes, sometimes known as Rojava. Fighting is now moving closer to the Euphrates, Right. Closer to the core of what people will call Rojava. I think at a minimum, the goal is probably to remove the SDF from any areas that are not majority Kurdish. So right now that they're fighting in Deir Hafa, they will begin fighting. Or that there have already been drone attacks in other areas as well. In Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory on Human Rights, which is a Britain based human rights organization, documented several war crimes. I'm going to quote here. SOHR documented 23 cases of extrajudicial executions and desecration of bodies in Sheikh Maqsood and Al Asafriya neighbourhoods in Aleppo city in the past few days. Here are further details. The bodies of 15 members of the internal security forces as AISH, including bodies of four female members, were deliberately incinerated. A female member of the Ash forces was killed during the clashes and her body was thrown from the top of the building. The reason they've been able to document these is that they're widely broadcast on telegram. Right. People are very proud of what are war crimes.
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E
Right.
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C
The desecration of the remains. Jesus. At the same time, the Islamic state carried out three simultaneous attacks on 12 January, injuring several SDF personnel. And it seems that this whole debacle has put the peace process between the pkk. The PKK is a distinct entity from the sdf. Right. But nonetheless the pkk, I guess is seeing Kurdish people killed in Syria and Turkish support. Right. There have been some reports of Turkish drones being used or flying around there. So the kck, if people aren't familiar, the KCK is the organization that brings together the different political groups in Kurdistan that broadly adhere to the political ideology or thought of Abdul Ozilan, but take different approaches to that. The KCK released a statement saying, quote, the attacks on Sheikh Maqsood Nasser and the preparations for attacks on the east of the Euphrates also call into question the ceasefire between our movement in Turkey and the ongoing peace and democratic society. That is not great. Right?
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E
Yeah.
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C
You know, this is a place where people have been at war, killing and dying for more than a decade and it's very sad to think of more killing and dying happening there. Gare, I know you wanted to talk a little bit about some domestic terrorism, I guess some actual domestic terrorism and arson attack. Right. Do you want to talk about that?
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A
Yes. On Saturday, January 10, the Beth Israel Congregation Synagogue in Mississippi, an historic synagogue, the oldest in the state of that was once targeted by the kkk, was set on fire in the middle of the night, damaging the interior of the building. A 19 year old college student named Steven Spencer Pitman has been charged with federal and state arson charges, as well as a hate crime enhancement. On Instagram, Pitman described himself as a, quote, unquote, follower of Christ and shared a meme of the anti Semitic hate happy merchant hours before the attack.
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E
Jesus Christ.
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C
Jeez.
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A
The happy merchant is an anti Semitic Jewish stereotype that is often used in memes originating from the 4chan era of Wojack memes. You've probably seen it before. It's a crude anti Semitic rendering of a Jewish person with his hands clasped together. Pittman has confessed to starting a fire in the building, which he described as the quote, unquote, Satan. Synagogue of Satan, according to an FBI affidavit. And reporting from the AP states that during his first hearing, when the judge read him his rights, Pittman said, quote, jesus Christ is Lord, unquote. According to the FBI affidavit, Pittman texted his own father during the arson, sending a photo of the synagogue with the messages. There's a furnace in the back, hoodie is on, and they have the best cameras, unquote. Pittman's father attempted to convince his son to come home and later turned him in to the authorities. Pittman suffered burns to himself during this attack. He's the only person injured as a result of this incident, thankfully.
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E
Glad he got hurt.
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A
Pittman's phone was found in the synagogue damaged from the fire, though his location was able to be tracked via the Life 360 GPS tracking app, which shows a stop at a gas station where Pittman allegedly picked up gasoline before heading onto the synagogue.
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C
Great. What a fucking idiot. But, yeah, this is. I think this is the only synagogue in the state. Right?
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A
Like the oldest synagogue in the state. I doubt this is the only synagogue in Mississippi.
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C
The largest one. That's it. Yeah.
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A
Yes. Yeah, it's like the most famous one.
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C
Yeah, yeah. And yeah, like you said, it was attacked by the Clan before it was. Didn't he attack exact. The same part of the synagogue that the Clan previously burned.
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A
I. I don't have that in my notes, but that is.
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C
It seems like that's what he was. Same vibes.
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A
No, he did say that he did a lot of research on the target and that he needed a home run in communications to his father. And Pitman was a baseball player in the state. There's not much more to say about this. Like, this is a weirdo Instagram Christian zoomer who also offered like a fitness service. It's unclear how real this is or if he had, like, you know, customers, but he was offering faith based fitness transformations shoes yeah, that's the thing. Like, you have a little bit of like the Christian looks maxer vibe going on with him as well as sharing a series of anti Semitic posts made on Instagram.
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C
Yeah. Did you see this Deborah Lipstadt tweet care.
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A
No.
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C
So Deborah Lipstadt, right. Who was previously the. She, like the envoy on anti Semitism, hosted 823 on January 11. This is a major tragedy. But it's more than that. It's an arson attack and another step in the globalization of the Intifada.
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A
That's not seemed to be the case.
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C
Yeah, no, no, but this is like pretty way off base in fact. Right. But yeah, I think it's still rather telling that this is.
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This is not like a Hamas, anti imperialist zoomer, red triangle and bio type guy. This is a right wing Christian nationalist, college athlete, Christian zoomer.
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C
Yeah.
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Who shares anti Semitic memes on Instagram. This is a pretty standard, you know, pre 2022 type of like synagogue attack.
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C
Yeah.
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A
In fact, the fire was started right in front of a Tree of Life memorial plaque in the synagogue.
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C
Jesus Christ, God.
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E
Of course it was.
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C
Yeah.
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E
And we are back. So the thing I thought I was going to be talking about this week was, was a Supreme Court ruling on Trump's tariffs. However, the Supreme Court, contrary to the expectations that basically everyone didn't actually release a ruling on the tariff stuff today. We have no idea when they're going to release that. However, instead of that, we got one of the most bizarre and extraordinary statements and videos I have ever seen from someone who was even remotely affiliated with the US Government. So on Sunday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell released. I don't even have a good reference for what this is. The closest thing I can think of is it's a kidnapping video, but it's more like a hell if I'm about to be kidnapped video in which he says, quote, the Department of Justice served the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas threatening a criminal indictment related to my testimony before the Senate Banking Committee last June. So this is nominally about cost overruns, effectively, in renovations of the Federal Reserve. If anyone has ever paid attention to any single US Government project ever, you will know that there are cost overruns on, like most projects. This is just how the government works because you come in with your. With a bid that's below what the actual cost is going to be, and then it costs more than that. Now this investigation is being run directly into Jerome Powell. And by the way, this statement was published on the Federal Reserve's. This is like an Official statement from, from the Federal Reserve Board.
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C
Yeah, yeah.
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E
So he also says later in the statement, quote, the threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessments of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President. This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions or, or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressures or intimidation. This is extraordinary. They got 16 other central bank leaders from around the world, and we're talking about Norway to Indonesia to submit a letter expressing where they use the word solidarity to express their support of Powell. I cannot emphasize enough. Do you know how bad it is to get central bank leaders to say the word solidarity?
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C
Yeah.
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E
Now, this is following a Trump 2 pattern of using the DOJ to attack their political enemies. Today, the 14th as we're recording this, also saw the beginning of an investigation into Senator Elisa Slotkin over her participation in a video a few months ago encouraging US Troops to disobey illegal orders. Mark Kelly, who was also in that video, was also targeted with a Pentagon investigation over the video. So this has become very common. However, Jerome Powell is a Trump 1 appointee. So this is someone who is also. And this is, this is, this is something that worth mentioning. Powell is very popular in conservative circles, largely outside of a very, very immediate circle of people around Trump who want the President to be able to control the interest rate. Now, I'm going to do a full episode about this probably next week, but the independence of the central bank is one of the core pillars of the global reputation and stability of the US Dollar. Now, I'm not saying here that the central bank is good. I'm saying that this is how the entire world economic system operates. Right? It is based on the central bank operating as a series of quasi public, but still technically non government entities that, that make independent decisions on interest rates. Now, Fed interest rates effectively, and I'm saying effectively here because I'm simplifying a very complicated set of economic interactions into one sentence. But they effectively set interest rates for bank loans in the broader economy, which in turn has a massive impact on how fast or slow the economy grows. And the Fed uses this as a tool to control inflation and unemployment through basically a single macroeconomic policy leverage. The Fed does much, much more stuff than this. I will get into this in the other episode. It has a series of unbelievably crucial functions. But what is happening here is the Trump administration attempting to directly seize control of the Fed and This is a nightmare. The actual mechanisms at work here in terms of the relationship between interest rates and the Fed's economic policy policy toolkit and inflation are not well understood even by the Fed, which is something you can get if you go read the Federal Reserve documents. It's very complicated. It's all contested, but it is the Fed's job to be able to do this. And they will admit they're not incredible at it. If the Trump administration is running this directly. The Trump administration has absolutely no idea how any of this stuff works. This is giving them the keys to the global economy, and they are going to just start pushing buttons. This is a significant enough threat that several Republican senators, and this is not just Morowski, these are like just regular Republican senators, have spoken out against this move and have expressed, you know, expressed that they think that Jerome Powell was innocent and that they will vote against any. Any attempt to approve a Trump nominee for the head of the Federal Reserve, which is also extraordinary. This is one of the largest breaks we've seen with Trump from the Republican Party so far. And the reason that there have been actual breaks from the Republican Party is that this is the Rubicon for a lot of sectors of capital. Almost anything can be endured as long as the President does not have direct control over the money supply, which is what Trump controlling the Federal Reserve directly would be. Now, part of what's going on here, right, is that this is an attempt to choose a new chair of the Federal Reserve Board by getting Powell out of his job.
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C
However.
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E
So Powell's term expires in May, but that's Powell's term as the chair of the Federal Reserve. He's still on the Board of Governors. And the Board of Governors also has to approve a new head of the Federal Reserve. So Trump needs to oust him from his position as the governor of the Federal Reserve Board, because if he doesn't do this, he doesn't have enough votes to get his appointments. The really dangerous thing here, on top of the abstract principle of, you know, the president having direct control over the central banking system, the direct immediate threat is that his preferred candidate, who is currently one of the Federal Reserve Board governors, one of the Federal Reserve governors who's on the board is Stefan Mirren, who is the guy who wants to charge other countries for holding U.S. bonds.
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C
So, yeah, I forgot.
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E
This guy is a maniac, right? Like, he, He.
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A
That's.
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C
Sorry.
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E
That is. That is deeply unfair to maniacs who are very reasonable people. This guy is. I cannot emphasize enough. If you put someone in charge of the Federal Reserve, who literally did not understand what economics was. They would do less damage than putting Steve Devin Mirren in charge of this. This is a nightmare. This guy has no idea what he's doing at all. He is effectively a cipher for Trump administration. And this is one of the positions in, in the entire capitalist system where the chair of the Federal Reserve has to be someone who at least sort of knows what's going on. They can be evil, and they very often have been, but they have to sort of know what's happening. If this guy gets put in charge of the Federal Reserve, he is going to turn the US economy into a smoking crater. And that's. That's what's at stake here with this attempt to prosecute Jerome Powell.
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A
Powell, blink three times if you need help.
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E
He's blinking three times a second.
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C
Yeah, he is.
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E
He is tapping SOS with his fingers.
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A
It is a very unnerving video that he posted.
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C
Yeah, it does look like one of those. If I disappear, he looks really scared.
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E
Yeah. And I think this is going to be one of the major flashpoints here because even the tariffs don't have the potential impact for economic disruption that handing the make countries pay money to hold US Bonds guy, the Federal Reserve Board chairman, does. So.
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C
Yeah. You will see opposition from Republicans because this directly impacts their bag.
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E
Yeah. This is the most you can possibly fuck with the money by attempting to take control of the entire money supply. There's a lot of fears here, too, and it's sort of worth mentioning this, and I've been seeing this passed around a lot, is that there is another sort of recent example of a technically elected president assuming effectively dictatorial powers. And it's Erdogan. And Erdogan eventually took control of the Central bank. And to get a sense of how that's going, the inflation rate in Turkey right Now is currently 30%. And everyone is celebrating because it's below 31%. And this is the lowest the inflation rate has been in ages. It was like 70% when they first started this, and it was 50% last year. And they've gotten it down to a mere 30% inflation rate.
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C
Yeah. Things going well.
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E
So this is the kind of thing that's on these people's minds because they all understand this. And this is not the Turkish Central Bank. Turkish Central bank is obviously important in the world economy. This is the United States Central Bank. This is a question of the fundamental legitimacy of the dollar as the world reserve currency and of the premier currency in the world economy. So we will See what happens as this continues to unfold. But this is probably the premier economic fight of the entire Trump administration. And we will, we will continue to update it as we learn more about how this is going to go.
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C
So I want to talk about something that came to my attention over the, over the break here.
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A
I feel like we should utilize a banking segue, in my opinion.
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C
Okay, fine. Yeah, fine, fine, fine. Talking of banks and of centralizing bank power under the state.
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A
There you go.
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C
Let's talk about an organization that once began as member of the kpd. We're going to talk about Germany and specifically I want to talk about an organization called Rotherhilfer Red Aid. Don't really speak German, so if I've pronounced that wrong, I hope you'll understand why we're talking about Rotherhilfer is that we a few months ago reported on the State Department adding various European organizations to its FTO list. Foreign terrorist organization. Right. And we wondered what this was about and what it would mean. We are now starting to see a little bit of what it would mean because Rotte Hilfer Red Aid has had its bank accounts closed in Germany. It had accounts with two different banks, both of which had sort of broadly social or ecological missions. Right. They were sort of progressive banks, I guess, if such a thing can exist. Because these banks are concerned with being sanctioned and effectively locked out of the United States swift system for doing business with a terrorist organization. Just to give some background on the org, I guess there's not a direct lineage from the KPD to this, but there was an organization of the same name from which it sees itself as descended, set up by the German Communist Party, which of course was dissolved by the Nazis. Today what they do is they do legal aid stuff. They appear to, like, send observers out to protest, to kind of document state violence. They have done some aid for asylum seekers. It has grown massively. It's doubled and then doubled again in the last decade in terms of membership. Right. And there have been attempts to ban it from, you know, the domestic right. In Germany. I've linked to one of the AFDE ones in the show notes, if people want to read it. But it being unbanked is effectively going to be fatal for the organization. Right. Like, it can't provide legal aid. It can't provide legal support if it doesn't have a place to store its money. I mean, I guess it could just have a big box of cash. But it's going to make it very hard for the organization to take donations or to allocate the money that it has. So this is something we might see more, right? Certainly in Germany, because Antifa OST is the organization that was sanctioned, but potentially also in in other places. Talking of having no money, here are some advertisements that can liberate you of some of yours.
- [28:20]
A
So for one of our last stories I would like to discuss one one of the one of the bigger news stories from the end of the year, something we did not have time to discuss in our Last ed of 2025 and this is the Turtle Island Liberation Front. An episode next week will be going into even more detail, but I will go over some of the broad strokes of the Turtle Island Liberation Front Alleged bombing plot on December 12, the FBI arrested four people in southern California who the government claims are members of a left wing activist group called the Turtle Island Liberation Front. The criminal complaint signed on December 13 by an FBI agent working at the Joint Terrorism Task Force in LA alleges that these four individuals conspired in a bombing plot planned for New Year's Eve 2025. According to the complaint, on November 26, one of the alleged TILF members I'm going to say TILF instead of the full name from now on, named Audrey Irene Carroll, gave an eight page handwritten document titled Operation Midnight sun outlining the plan for the bombing to a confidential human source who works for the FBI as an informant. The criminal complaint says this of the confidential human source, quote, the confidential human source is cooperating with law enforcement and is a validated and vetted source. The confidential human source has been a reliable source of information since in or around August 2020 21. The confidential human source is cooperating for financial compensation. The confidential human source does not have any criminal history. The confidential human source provided past reliable reporting on other cases and has provided reliable reporting in this case, unquote. The plan was for teams of four on the ground participants to plant backpacks containing complex pipe bombs, quote, unquote, or IEDs outside of buildings at five locations targeting two US companies and then simultaneously detonate the bombs at midnight on New Year's Eve 2025. There would be an off the ground member assisting the team remotely by listening to police scanners or be stationed in a vehicle in case a, quote, emergency getaway is needed, unquote. That's quoting from the plan and one member of each on the ground team would create graffiti of a red triangle and one message of the team's choosing on the sidewalk closest to the building while the other three are placing the devices. This indictment is a really interesting look at the modern direct action left because it includes a whole bunch of little tidbits like block and D block. It includes the alleged co conspirators, ground names like Asinok, ak, Nomad and Kickware, which are their ground names for this action.
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C
Yeah.
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A
The criminal complaint states that after making the initial plan, Carol and another individual, Zachary Aaron Page, recruited additional co conspirators who participated in further planning meetups and helped procure bomb making materials. On December 12, the four defendants traveled to a remote location in the Mojave Desert with the alleged intent to build and test explosive devices. FBI observed from a surveillance plane and then arrested Carol Paige, Dante Garfield and Tina Lai before they completed assembling a functional explosive device. They have since been charged with conspiracy and possession of an unregistered destructive device.
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D
As I mentioned in my Talking points, on December 12, a group of individuals, again members of this, this anti government group, traveled out to the desert to test their explosive devices. They had precursor chemicals there and they were going to, they were going to create these bombs in the desert. What they are starting to do is put their chemicals and wares and the components out on the table there. This footage that you're watching is from our surveillance plane. And then what happened after this is the Los Angeles FBI SWAT team, along with the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team, moved in and arrested all four subjects without, without incident.
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A
Now, the Turtle Island Liberation Front appears to be a relatively new group with a social media footprint that only goes back to July 2025. The Instagram page for their LA chapter reads, quote, liberation through decolonialization and tribal sovereignty, unquote. Their most recent post from December 12, the day of the arrests, is promoting a, quote, palestine pop up market in Culver City. A post from November 28 reads, quote, if they hurt you, they hurt me too. Our destinies are intertwined. Liberation for one must mean liberation for all. The empire must fall. And from within the belly of the beast, we must be the ones to dismantle it. Revolution is the only way. Stop, quote, peaceful protesting, unquote. Rise up. Fight back. We are not outnumbered. They are. Organize and be ready. Unquote.
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C
Yeah.
- [33:35]
A
The FBI source met with two TILF members in late November, Carolyn Page. And during this meeting, Carol gave the FBI source the handwritten bombing plot and retained three to four additional copies of this plan. And the plan identified five locations to target as marks with more blank slots on the plan which are captioned add more if enough comrades. According to the criminal complaint, these targets were, quote, property and facilities operated by two separate companies that are used or engaged in activities affecting interstate and foreign commerce, unquote. These are Amazon distribution type facilities. They've not specifically confirmed that they are Amazon facilities, but they are these sorts of like global shipping facilities. One of the things I find really interesting about this criminal complaint is the way that this FBI agent describes direct action tactics and the Turtle Island Liberation Front members like security practices throughout the planning of this action. This is quoting from the criminal complaint. Quote, the plan described multiple operations security measures the co conspirators should take to conceal their identities, such as the use of a burner phone that would be disposed of after the bombings by, quote, submerging it in a concrete brick after destroying the SIM and then disposing of the brick in a body of water, unquote. The target date of the operation, New Year's Eve was identified as an opportune time because, quote, fireworks will be going off at the time, so the explosions will be less likely to be noticed as immediately as any normal day, unquote. The plan emphasized that, quote, absolutely no mistakes can be made, unquote. The plans outline the use of quote unquote black block over top, a layer of quote unquote casual gray block on top of normal street clothes and noted to keep hair very tightly concealed and to wear gloves for the purpose of avoidance of leaving behind DNA. The plan further instructed that participants should leave their personal devices at home and make sure that devices were set up to stream a long movie during the time of the attacks as to craft an alibi or quote unquote plausible deniability by having it appear as though the actor was actively using their devices. The plan discussed pre operational surveillance of targets, identification of D block or D clothing locations and not leaving, quote, anything other than IEDs behind, unquote as they could not, quote, risk any evidence tracing back to us, unquote. The plan also noted the benefit of placing a small pebble in a shoe to alter natural gait to obfuscate their identification instructions on how to purchase materials to construct a pipe bomb, suggested using cash only, purchasing only in small quantities to avoid suspicion, and splitting purchases amongst a team rather than individually, unquote. This is the type of stuff I find really interesting is this emphasis on all of these, you know, OPSEC like operational security measures, all while working with an FBI informant from the very start of the operation and then recruiting another one during the planning stages. During a meeting on December 7, three Turtle Island Liberation Front members at least met both with the confidential human source as well as an undercover FBI employee while trying to recruit more members to join this operation, both of whom accompanied the Turtle Island Liberation Front members as they traveled to the Mojave Desert on December 12 to allegedly build and test out explosive devices for the direct action. There's a lot more information in the indictment as well as some news that has happened since then, like an arrest in Louisiana, also tied to Turtle Island Liberation Front, but we will discuss those in a future episode. As of now, three defendants in this case have pled not guilty, and the fourth is set to be arraigned on January 20th.
- [37:22]
B
Are you planning on doing that next week, Garrett?
- [37:24]
A
Yes. There will be an episode next week going into more details about this group, their politics, as well as the FBI undercover and informant, and their level of involvement in this action, which has spurred a lot of discourse online. About this being a, quote, unquote, like, sting operation. About this being a, quote, unquote psyop.
- [37:45]
C
Yeah, I guess I'll just say very briefly, the FBI, it's not their first time and it's not their last time, probably doing something like this, right. Like, you can look at many other cases and see FBI sort of CIS doing this kind of thing. So I think that context is important here. I just want to finish up with a migration update. First of all, DHS fractured the skull of a protester and blinded him by firing a less than lethal munition into his face at close range at Santa Ana this week. I've linked to an article for people who'd like to read more of that. Secondly, Judge Boasberg, who was the judge overseeing the case about the Alien Enemies act, ordered the government to provide relief to Venezuelans sent to Secot. Marco Rubio provided a statement responding that doing so would, quote, materially damage US Foreign policy interests. Essentially, he's saying the state can't comply with the order to provide redress for wrongdoing by returning them, and it can't even give them due process. Right. Because it has since kidnapped the president of Venezuela. In related news, senators including Schmidt and Cruz have called for Boasberg's impeachment. Cruz makes these allegations, they're pretty minor and crucially and very unusually, both of them have been repudiated by the Administrative Office of United States Courts, which doesn't normally do this kind of thing. Right. But in both cases, they've written letters kind of clarifying why Boasberg's conduct is totally normal. Both the Cruz's claims relate to decisions Boasberg made with which he disagrees. One pertains to a non disclosure order that he gave so that Republican Senators would not be notified of subpoenas of their phone records. In the fake elector investigation that was called the Arctic Frost investigation at the time that looked at attempts to overturn the 2020 United States election. They're also trying to impeach Judge Boardman for a separate decision in which they feel her sentence for a person who pled guilty to attend me to murder Justice Kavanaugh was too light. And then just today, which is Wednesday of this week as we're recording this, the State department announced on X.com the everything website that it is pausing visa processing for 75 countries, quote, whose migrants take welfare from the American people at unacceptable rates. The freeze will remain active until the US can ensure that new immigrants will not extract wealth from the American people. It's not clear what they are talking about. Are they talking about immigrant, non immigrant visas, both of the above? Are they talking about people who have violated the public charge rule or they just feel that any excess of any benefit of state support is quote unquote extracting wealth from the American people? If you do not know what the public charge rule is, luckily for you, I made a podcast about it in November of June 2024, so you can scroll all the way back more than a year and find that. I will try and find it for you and include a link in the show notes. I think what's crucial here is that this will reduce dramatically the rate at which migrants access government services. Right? Which are often very beneficial, especially when it comes to things like child nutrition, child welfare services. Right? Finally, the State Department also posted on x.com the everything website that it has revoked 100,000 visas, including 8,000 student visas in the last we have no way of verifying that. If you would like to email us, you could do so just email coolzonetipsoton me. If you want it to be encrypted, you should use a proton mail address as well.
- [41:09]
A
We reported the news.
- [41:11]
F
We reported the news.
- [41:21]
B
It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzone media.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in Episode Descriptions. Thanks for listening.
- [41:44]
A
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [41:46]
B
Guaranteed Human.