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- [00:00]
Danielle Kantor
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:02]
Donna Al Kurd
Guaranteed Human.
- [00:08]
Robert Evans
Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch, if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.
- [00:33]
Donna Al Kurd
Hello, everyone. My name is Donna Al Kurd, and this is. It could happen here. I'm an associate professor of political science and a researcher of Arab and Palestinian politics. Today on the podcast, we have Danielle Kantor, and she'll be talking to us about mutual aid work in Israel, leftist politics in Israel, and her personal journey. Thank you so much for being on the show.
- [00:54]
Danielle Kantor
Hi.
- [00:55]
Donna Al Kurd
So, yeah, if you'd like to introduce us to yourself and your organization, Culture of Solidarity, that would be fantastic.
- [01:02]
Gordain (Gordian)
Sure.
- [01:02]
Danielle Kantor
Yeah. Hi, I'm Danielle. I run with a beautiful community in mutual aid called Culture of Solidarity. I don't know if people here are familiar with mutual aid work or if I should give a little explanation about that.
- [01:18]
Donna Al Kurd
I mean, you can give a spiel.
- [01:19]
Danielle Kantor
Yeah, a little spiel. Yeah. Just basically kind of caring for your community through different, like, aid programs while resisting the systems that kind of preserve their poverty and their oppression. That's how I view what mutual aid work is. And, yeah, so we run a mutual aid. It runs in many forms, but mostly it's. We have a food security program that supports kind of the people that fall in between the cracks of the systems within Israel and Palestine. Well, obviously the systems within Israel and in Palestine. We work mainly in Area C in the west bank and Mesafariyata. Yeah. So we do food security, like food packs that are culturally appropriate for each community, receiving them based off of what they are asking, whether it's diapers, baby formula, you know, fit to each holiday. Now we just finished, or we're still in the midst of a Ramadan annual campaign where they're all going to be boxes fit for the holiday. And we host. Well, we had a community center for the past five years. We've been a collective, I guess, since March 2020 when Covid hit. So basically when that started, it was kind of like we saw that there was going to be a lot of food waste, like an obscene amount of food waste, because all the restaurants, offices, hotels, blah, blah, blah, would be closing. And we thought we'd kind of rescue that food and redistribute it to communities that were in need until the government kind of got on their feet and understood what this 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. So that's when it started, and I think only like a few months into that, when we thought we were kind of just like, yeah, good citizens doing the work and not understanding how politically charged it is to serve your community when they're actively being oppressed by the systems that are supposed to care for them. And I think in that moment, we understood that we want to not only serve our neighbors, our community, we also need to learn about these root causes of oppression and what brought them to this position in the first place. You know, people often say, like, oh, you know, someone's poor, they don't have food in their fridge, like. Like in their ways of trying to raise funds or whatever. And it's. It's an atrocity almost to kind of depict it that way, because all of these communities are actively being abandoned. Yeah. Being abandoned in a nice way. You know, they didn't wake up one morning and didn't have food in their fridge.
- [04:11]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [04:11]
Danielle Kantor
They don't have food in their fridge because of a policy that preserves that status. And so that is the mutual aid that we run. We had a community center for five years where we hosted weekly events or daily events every evening. All the events would be under that umbrella of learning as a community about these injustices. And they could also be, you know, shows, and they could be debates, and they could be lectures or workshops. And all of the proceeds would go to our food security program. And in that way, we are 100% community funded. No one has salaries. We made a conscious decision back in the beginning when we realized all the injustices around us, that we didn't want to institutionalize and become part of a system that is responsible for that. And that is not to say that NGOs aren't amazing. That is not to say that, you know, there aren't NGOs doing God's work
- [05:11]
Donna Al Kurd
here, but they're constrained. Yeah. There's. There's different constraints.
- [05:15]
Danielle Kantor
Yeah. And this was our personal decision to act as a community. There's another reason we didn't want to institutionalize, and it's because we didn't want to make a business out of something that shouldn't be needed. You know what I mean? When you get salaries intact and you
- [05:29]
Donna Al Kurd
like, it perpetuates the need to continue in a way.
- [05:33]
Danielle Kantor
And like, there's always going to be need. Right? Like, it's not like we're going to, you know. Oh, and then they're not going to need anymore. But, you know, I saw on Hinge, it's like a dating app.
- [05:43]
Donna Al Kurd
Yeah, yeah.
- [05:44]
Danielle Kantor
It said an app meant to be deleted. And I just thought about that. Like, oh, my God. That is the essence of it all. Like, we're not supposed to be doing this. This isn't like, I mean, we should be caring for our community and our neighbors. That should go without saying. But also our taxes should be directed to serving our neighbors that are in vulnerable states.
- [06:07]
Donna Al Kurd
So I will definitely link in the show notes to, like, the Instagram and things like that. And for people who are. I mean, I'm sure for some people who have seen the documentary no Other Land, this is the same community that you all work with in Masafiryatla. But yeah, so I'm interested in a couple different kind of directions. But would you say that a lot of the people who come to culture of solidarity and volunteer and start to participate in your activities, do you think that that opens up the space to not only question injustices within the Israeli system, but how that's tied up with the occupation? Like, is that kind of the path forward for people?
- [06:46]
Danielle Kantor
I think that is the path forward that we want for people. I think we are very forgiving, in a sense, in the way that. Not forgiving, but just understanding. Know, the journey that it took us to unlearn what we know, like, that's a hard one. And I'm going to go pre October 7th. You know, you're doing work to unlearn what you've been taught isn't your entire identity. And, you know, post October 7th, you just see everything. Like, everything has become so much more pornographic. Like, you know, it's the amount of that murder, the genocide, the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. You know, just this week, six communities have been pushed out of their. Their homes by the army, by settlers, terrorists. And it's become much more immediate. Whereas I think before October 7th, I mean, there didn't go a week in which we didn't have an event talking about the occupation and learning. But I think after October 7, it became this like, huge divide of like, this kind of like protection over one's identity. So we did a lot of work to kind of dismantle that notion that to empathize with another people comes on the expense of your own pain and trying to, you know, mirror the power dynamic to people. Like, yes, we all had family and friends and people that we knew that were murdered, that were taken, that were like abducted. And with that being said, Israel has been committing a genocide in Gaza for the past still. It's ongoing two and something years. The other day got a message on our Instagram, basically being like, I love the work you do. You do really important things. And you know, there's is racism and there is poverty, but from there to say that there's ethnic cleansing. Come on. Like, I don't know if I can support your work anymore. And basically also meet that with love as well. To be like, I hear you. This is the policies that people in our government are, are, are advancing. This is who our army is protecting. This is what ethnic cleansing means. 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, and you know, it's not even like this, like. Oh, how do I say? It's like. No, actually our, like our government officials are saying this, like smoothly said it the other day.
- [09:40]
Gordain (Gordian)
Right.
- [09:41]
Danielle Kantor
So.
- [09:42]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [09:43]
Donna Al Kurd
But yeah, it is this kind of like open door.
- [09:46]
Danielle Kantor
Yeah.
- [09:46]
Donna Al Kurd
For Israelis that maybe not. They're not there yet also.
- [09:51]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [09:51]
Danielle Kantor
I think that it's like, it's, it's hard. It's like really hard because you're at this point where it's like very far from where those people are that are like beginning. And also you have sometimes resentment towards your society and mother sometimes. A lot of the time you have. I'm always nothing with like, in general, when someone wants to. Is asking a question. I think that is just like amazing and important and cool. Let's have a conversation about this.
- [10:22]
Donna Al Kurd
At least they're asking.
- [10:23]
Gordain (Gordian)
Yeah.
- [10:23]
Danielle Kantor
And they're wanting to learn. They're questioning something that's, that's a way forward. And with that being said, you know, the past two and a half 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've seen what's been happening online over the past two years and you still can't comprehend what is going on. Then, God, 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 am living here, I have a responsibility, and that is to facilitate more meetings, conversations in which people will be exposed to the injustices being committed in our name. And, and that's a problem with liberal Zionism as well, because liberal Zionists would be like, oh my God, yeah, it's terrible what's happening in the west bank, the settlers, blah, blah, but like, they'll 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.
- [12:01]
Gordain (Gordian)
Right.
- [12:01]
Donna Al Kurd
Kind of demonstrate the cognitive dissonance to them. Like there's kind of a contradiction here.
- [12:06]
Danielle Kantor
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Sorry, I think I've just put a little.
- [12:10]
Donna Al Kurd
No, no, not at all. This is extremely rich in thought provoking content. I want to ask what kind of organizations does Culture of Sales Solidarity engage with? Whether in Israel and in Palestine? And kind of related to that, what role do you see an organization such as this, a mutual aid organization, what role do you envision for yourselves in Palestinian liberation? Like what role are you intending to play? You kind of touched on it already in terms of like teaching and learning within your own society.
- [12:50]
Danielle Kantor
But yeah, we work with a lot of different organizations because it is very important for us to, you know, not reinvent the wheel and kind of learn with our other organizations, whether it's Gisha, who talk about. The actual word of Gisha is access, and they talk about access in Gaza, the access to water, to electricity, the infrastructure in Gaza. And then we could host tours. Every time it's a different organization. This guy Mani in our group, he runs these tours and he will do with Breaking the Silence in Masafiryata, they'll do one with Zechot, which I'm sure. Yeah, you can probably link all of these in the.
- [13:32]
Donna Al Kurd
Definitely will. Yeah.
- [13:34]
Danielle Kantor
In Mashia, which is the Charles Clor Montiya, which is literally down the street from where I'm at right now, and it's the beach of Yaffa in the village that once existed there, or even with a woman named Hilaharel to go through a tour within the half abandoned Israeli bus new bus station. And they're all tied to injustices. They're all tied to something that was or yeah, was there and isn't anymore or atrocities currently happening, obviously also in the, in the Negev to learn about the different Bedouin communities and the injustices that they're experiencing. And then so that's. Yeah, it's called touring in solidarity. And then we'll have, I mean, honestly, probably any left, radical left organization that you could probably think of, we collaborate with them in some way or another. It's a pretty tight knit community. And this has been a beautiful thing of like trying to. And always there's always a knits and grits of 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.
- [14:46]
Donna Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [14:47]
Danielle Kantor
And for an actual true democracy in the land or liberation. Yeah.
- [14:52]
Donna Al Kurd
Do you work with Palestinian groups within Israel and in the occupied territories?
- [14:57]
Danielle Kantor
Yes, we do. We worked with an organization in Gaza called Dignity for Palestine and we did a big flower fundraiser last year. And we've worked with organizations that are like, you know, Physicians for Human Rights that are both, you know, Israeli and Palestinian led. And then we have our annual Ramadan campaign that I was telling you about now. And that's with Rabbis for Human Rights who are not Palestinian. But 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 Oda Delin, who was murdered in July by settler, you know, Levy. So yeah, it's working directly with communities. Second question was what role do leftists Israelis have right now? Is that the question?
- [15:54]
Donna Al Kurd
Yeah. Like what role do you envision either for yourself as you, you personally or for the Israeli left in Palestinian liberation? I know it's a big question.
- [16:03]
Danielle Kantor
That is a big question. It's an important question. And I think as long as we are living on this land, it's our response. I think it's everyone's responsibility to free Palestine and for the Palestinian people to have equal rights, to have access to whatever they wish for under a government that sees both counterparts equally and obviously accountability and reparations that would need to happen in order to, to get there. I think that our responsibility as Israeli left is to keep fighting for that is to keep fighting for that within Israel and within Palestine. So whether it's protective presence in the west bank, protective presence is a kind of program where you sleep at different Palestinian homes every night just in case settlers come in the middle of the night to attack or the army comes in the Middle of the night to attack and you're there serving as protective presence. You obviously have a privilege. You have an Israeli passport, you're Jewish. That is a privilege on this land and to be there. 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 Israelis, Israeli 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, it, I think it's like gotten a lot of
- [17:44]
Donna Al Kurd
attention on them essentially.
- [17:46]
Danielle Kantor
Well, there's always been attacks by settlers, of course. Yeah, but I think that, yeah, in the past year it's gotten to an all time high.
- [17:54]
Donna Al Kurd
Well, there's also kind of like the general impunity that the Israeli government and the settler movement.
- [17:59]
Danielle Kantor
Like, exactly.
- [18:00]
Donna Al Kurd
It's not yet, especially after Biden left, like, not that he was holding them accountable, but certainly gloves were off after that for sure.
- [18:07]
Danielle Kantor
No, no, exactly, that is very true. But basically in the last year, two years, it's gotten much, much worse. So I think Israeli leftists have a responsibility to be, serve as protective presence for one, number one, I think number two, they have a responsibility to educate their society and to not only educate, but 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. 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 Westerner abroad telling you like, well why do you live in Palestine? You should leave, blah, blah, blah, or whether it's a Palestinian in the west bank being like, you can leave like you have, we, we need you here. Obviously it's an unnatural ecosystem to have, you know, leftist activists running through villages in the west. I mean, but, but that's the reality of things. So as long as I am here living on this land and where I'm from, I'm going to do everything in my power to resist what is happening and to learn together with other people. It's, it's hard because we're not a We're a really tiny community. Like, 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 the 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, but then you're bitter, and I'm like, ah.
- [20:03]
Donna Al Kurd
You're like, you've made so much work for us.
- [20:05]
Danielle Kantor
Yeah, I mean, also, I get it. I've been there. I wasn't raised in a left home. I know what it is to be raised up conservative, right wing, you know, Zionist, and I'm obviously very far from that. But I know what it's like to have to leave everything you've been raised on. I know what it's like to have family not want to talk to you. I know what it's like to have friends not want to be friends with you anymore. To have so many people around you telling you that you're wrong, but you know that this is the right thing to do. And I get that and I have compassion for that. But then there's also just like, sometimes
- [20:45]
Donna Al Kurd
you're just like, yeah, no, I can't. I can't imagine. I mean, it's a. It's a very difficult journey to travel through. I understand the sentiment that you've expressed that like, the last two years should have been enough.
- [20:59]
Gordain (Gordian)
Yeah.
- [20:59]
Donna Al Kurd
But also it's like this whole identity is fragile and people are human beings and, like, it's difficult for them to, like, yeah, I'm not saying anything new, just reiterating what you said about, like, unlearning. Like, it's. It's an extremely difficult thing to go through, I think.
- [21:17]
Danielle Kantor
No, but do you understand, like, you know, you're Palestinian and like, me complaining about this thing that we're doing, like, it just feels like people know what's been going on. But obvious Palestinians that have family, friends, that are subjected to this violence and that are themselves subjected to that violence abroad because of being Palestinian. And then what is happening here? It's like two different worlds. And it's funny for me to even, like, be like, oh, yeah, like, to even try to explain that, because I'm sure people will be listening to this and be like, oh, like, 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 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, if you still call it AI. If you still call it, like, there's some deep reckoning to do there.
- [22:15]
Donna Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [22:16]
Danielle Kantor
But anyways, I just feel like it's such two different worlds. And I think that. I think, as is, as Israeli leftists that live here, you know, pay taxes in this land, we have a huge responsibility, if not the number one responsibility to Palestinian liberation. And. Yeah, I think that's the very long answer to your question.
- [22:42]
Donna Al Kurd
No, no, I mean, I think it's. Yeah, it's a fair answer. I. I just, you know, think to myself that, like, it's not coincidence and it's not to take away from the agency of, like, individuals. Obviously, everybody has choices to make. Like, Israelis have choices to make. They can choose to believe or not believe, or they can choose to turn their back. But at the same time, it's like systems have led them to a 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 was an Israeli 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 7th 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?
- [24:15]
Danielle Kantor
Well, obviously, it's our fascist government and fascist society. Anyone that is actively oppressing every minority on this land, and especially Palestinians. So I think our biggest threat is our government at the moment, but I think that our biggest. My biggest threat, if I could think of, like, what is the biggest threat, is apathy. 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. And I think on paper, the biggest obstacle would probably be our government that are, you know, acting such a fascist, fanatic Nazi manner. And I think, yeah, as an individual, being a part of grassroots communities and seeing, you know, at the end of the day, there are people that are going out there and actively, like, murdering Palestinians that are, you know, pushing for policies to deport children, Filipino children or children of migrant workers. There's so many injustices towards different people. And there are people that are, like, actively going out and. 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 out that part, because it sounds like you're, like, voting, like you're, like, rooting for the fascist to act. I'm like, no, no. The fact is that there are people that are doing these really, really bad things. And when we're not countering them, when we are just letting them happen and be like, oh, yeah, that sucks, but not doing anything about it, not using our privilege or our voice or a microphone to resist that, then we're conforming with it. And I know that's not fun to think. That's not fun. It's not fun to, like, go or organize protests. 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. It's not like we're doing that. But I think when it's within Israeli society, when it's organizing protests, when it's joining a protest as a number, when it's, you know, learning and doing, unlearning, it's not always easy, and it's not always someone's first. Yeah. Decision to make. But I think that when you don't do that, I think that is the biggest threat. You know, in the Holocaust, in many different atrocities over the years, the thing that, like, stood out most was people that were silent and people that, yeah, didn't resist in one way or another.
- [27:01]
Donna Al Kurd
It's like that movie Zone of Interest,
- [27:03]
Danielle Kantor
like, oh, my God, that movie. That movie just shaped these past two and a half years. Like, I saw it a few months after October 7th, and I just. Every moment that life just existed in Israel and you saw warplanes flying above you and you know what's going to happen, you hear, too. Like, you hear bombs falling, you hear. And everyone's just, like, gotten used to it. And you're just like, we're living in zone of interest.
- [27:31]
Donna Al Kurd
Yeah, that's wild.
- [27:33]
Gordain (Gordian)
Yeah.
- [27:33]
Danielle Kantor
I think it's like a constant question of do I want to be a part of the society, Do I want to fight? Life would be much easier if I moved away and I was just like, fuck this place. Which is not a bad thing to do. I have many friends that have done this and I understand that it's really hard, you know, life would be easier if I just left. It's not the, I don't want to say, it's not the sexy narrative to be like, like, look, we can both, you know, look, you know, let's learn. It's not fun to be talking in trying to reason with fascists, like, or people that are in deep denial of a reality you're really well intertwined with. But I think it's my moral responsibility as an Israeli to be here as long as I can and help create platforms for our society to learn and resist.
- [28:34]
Donna Al Kurd
Yeah, no, I think like you said, there are different pathways, but I can definitely understand, like the feeling you have that it's like an abdication of responsibility, having been a part of the society to some degree to. Yeah, throw your hands, essentially. One last question. I was watching the documentary Coexistence My Ass, which is an incredible documentary. I really encourage people to watch it if they can. And it's filmed and it incorporates that moment of October 7th and shows. I mean, I think implies. Though of course, I, I don't know how widely this applies, but it shows and implies how parts of the left fell off, you know, after October 7th. Do you feel like now we're 2026, we're recording February 22nd, 2026. Do you feel like people are starting to, like, come back?
- [29:29]
Danielle Kantor
I don't know.
- [29:31]
Donna Al Kurd
Or did just the left get smaller?
- [29:33]
Danielle Kantor
I think the radical left has become just much more tight knit. And yeah, whoever's a part of it is kind of a part of it. People are always welcome to join and be a part, but it's kind of, you know, you kind of have your usual suspects at this point. And I think the broader, like, I don't know, liberal Zionists that will call themselves left and Israel just like isn't really left because they're talking about a democracy within an apartheid state. They are, like I said earlier, sending their sons to war. 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. 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 48. 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 or silence is allowing, perpetuate, then the left here is very, very tiny. And I say that not to toot our own horn. You know, it's not in a way of like, it's not. We're not on a moral high ground. Like, maybe there was a moment where I did feel that way in a sense of like, I know and you don't know, or like. But then you know very quickly, in order to turn your activism into something sustainable, you have to 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 Didi, 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, a just future, then you have to fight for everyone to have those rights as well.
- [32:36]
Donna Al Kurd
Yeah, thank you so much for that. I always say, like, I mean, I think this is applicable lots of places. I say it here in the United States, like when there was a crackdown on pro Palestine protesters and just the complete reversal of freedom of speech and everything like that because they happened to be pro Palestine. I said, you know, this is eroding the tenuous democracy you have. It's democracy for all of us or none of us. And in Israel it's like you can be liberal and 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. So it's, you know, for a variety of reasons, moral reasons, of course, but also self interest. Dalia Schindler has an interesting article about this and an interesting argument about this that I'll link in the show notes, and I would say she's a believer in maybe a confederation or something like that, but her analysis is the occupation ruined the potential of Israeli democracy. Like I said, she comes at it from a very kind of different angle, I think, than you do, but still is a reasonable argument at the end of it. But yeah, thank you so much, Danielle. This has been a really rich conversation and I think that the listeners will benefit a lot from having this laid out. And of course I'll include everything in the show notes about the groups that we mentioned.
- [34:07]
Danielle Kantor
Thank you so much for inviting me. And yeah, I hope I didn't talk your head off.
- [34:14]
Donna Al Kurd
No, not at all.
- [34:15]
Garrison Davis
This was great.
- [34:16]
Donna Al Kurd
Thank you so much.
- [34:27]
Vicky Osterweil
Safeway and Albertsons have made saving easier
- [34:29]
Mia Wong
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- [34:47]
Vicky Osterweil
Limit three member price with digital coupon.
- [34:50]
Mia Wong
Hurry in. These deals won't last. Visit safeway or albertsons.com for more deals and ways to save.
- [35:12]
Garrison Davis
This is it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis reporting from the New York State Capital. In the early early morning of Wednesday, February 25, I rode on a bus from the snowy streets of the Financial District in Lower Manhattan up to Albany, the New York State capital. The bus arrived at the Armory arena shortly before 10am Inside, there was coffee and breakfast signs and posters Tax the rich embroidered beanies and over a thousand New Yorkers gathered to tell Kathy Hochul 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 Chi Ose, with speakers from Local unions like the Nurses Association 1099SEIU, 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 taxi cabs honking outside. The New York DSA marching band.
- [37:04]
James Stout
We are the workers.
- [37:05]
Vicky Osterweil
Sooner, a little bit louder.
- [37:08]
Robert Evans
We need funding for our future.
- [37:11]
Mia Wong
1.
- [37:12]
James Stout
We are the workers.
- [37:14]
Mia Wong
A little bit louder.
- [37:16]
James Stout
We need funding for our future.
- [37:19]
Robert Evans
1.
- [37:21]
Garrison Davis
It is 12:30 and the crowd, the crowd is now approaching the New York State Capitol building. The crowd is stretching halfway around the square in front of all these government buildings and still marching forward. I'm about to enter the State Capitol building. After about a 25, 30 minute march and some chanting outside, a steady stream of people are now flowing into the capital.
- [37:53]
Vicky Osterweil
All right, you guys are gonna have to exit. We cannot take any more.
- [37:58]
Garrison Davis
Okay. I have made it inside the Capitol building, barely. The last person admitted in the top security section by the main entrance. But now I'm down at the lower level, the concourse, and as you can hear, a massive crowd is approaching the security gate in the lower concourse, taking up the entirety of that corridor and just now have entered the security gate area of the Capitol. We'll return to socialist January 6th later this episode, but first, some context on why this protest is happening and what it's hoping to achieve. On January 1, democratic socialist Zoran Mamdani 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 Hochul 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 Hochul, 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 external pressure still must be applied to Governor Hochul in order to secure the funding for the Mamdani mandate that voters delivered in the 2025 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 $12 billion 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 70s, 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, streamline processes and eliminate waste. Through his relationship with Governor Kathy Hochul, the mayor secured $1.5 billion 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 5.5 billion. Still a painful gap to fill. In the preliminary budget unveiled February 17, the mayor laid out two paths to close this gap. The first is a 2% income tax increase on New Yorkers making over $1 million 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 raiding the rainy day fund and raising city property tax by 9.5%. 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 faced criticism for falling short of promises to increase funding to parks and libraries. The Library budget is 0.11% less than Mamdani campaigned on, and the park budget remains flat. Rather than boosting it to 1% of the total budget as hoped, though this is still preliminary and subject to change. This budget does contain $500 million for new programmatic spending, including new funding for shelter services, mental health care and the emergency food program, and cancels an Eric Adams plan to add 5,000 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 and the mta. But Mamdani just appointed six new people to the Rent Guidelines Board, making a rent freeze more likely. In his second week in office, Mamdani announced a partnership with the governor to provide universal child care for kids under five in New York State and in New York City, expand Pre K, the free 3K program and free child care for 2 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 rich or calls to fund local services and weather. The massive cuts to SNAP food, food stamps and Medicaid. In Trump's one big beautiful bill, the Tax the Rich campaign writes, quote, if we don't tax the rich, millions of New Yorkers will lose health care or go hungry. New York can afford to stand up to Trump's agenda, unquote. At the Albany rally, City Councilman Chi Ose spoke about how New York state has over 100 billionaires and New York actually gained 13,000 millionaires in 2024 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.
- [45:20]
Vicky Osterweil
United auto Workers Region 9A Professional Staff
- [45:25]
James Stout
Congress, Communication Workers of America.
- [45:32]
Vicky Osterweil
We gotta give this one a shout out because they just came off of a historic strike and a huge, huge contract bid. New York State Nurses Association,
- [45:45]
James Stout
Committee of Internet Residents, seiu, Federal Unionist Network and
- [45:52]
Vicky Osterweil
D Doctors Council, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, New Yorkers United for Child Care, alliance for Quality Education, the New York Working Families Parties.
- [46:05]
James Stout
But we really appreciate you're here.
- [46:07]
Vicky Osterweil
And with a coalition this strong, make no mistake, we are going to overcome the political power of the billionaire class and we are going to tax the
- [46:20]
James Stout
rich for a New York we can afford.
- [46:26]
Garrison Davis
This coalition went up to Albany pushing for a handful of bills currently under consideration. The first is a progressive state income tax bill which will create new tax brackets starting at $1 million so that as people earn millions more dollars in income, they pay a slightly higher share in taxes. This would raise an estimated $21 billion 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 $50,000 or $5 million where you pay practically the same rate of roughly 3.9%. The Fair Share act seeks to add a a 2% surcharge to those with incomes of over $1 million per year, which would raise about $4 billion 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 2.5 million in profits pay what they owe in taxes. This proposal would raise $7 billion annually. And finally, a bill which could be funded by some of the former tax bills is the Universal Child Care act which would ensure free year round full day childcare without means testing and guarantee that all child care workers are paid a genuine living wage. As of now, 22 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.
- [48:20]
James Stout
We pay taxes.
- [48:22]
Robert Evans
Why don't they billionaires make them pay?
- [48:25]
Mia Wong
We pay taxes, why don't they billionaires make them pay?
- [48:33]
Garrison Davis
I was the last person to be allowed into the Capitol building. There is hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of people outside now trying to get in to tell the politicians, representatives and the Governor that they want to tax the rich. I am in in the lower concourse of the Capitol building barely getting through security on the top floor because there are 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 capital. You holding signs taking up the entire passageway. It's the CUNY group. It is the public University union that has appeared. Later that day I interviewed someone with psc, the CUNY staff union.
- [49:42]
Liz Stevenson
I'm Liz Stevenson. I am an academic advisor at City Tech, which means I'm a of member member of the PSC CUNY union.
- [49:50]
Garrison Davis
Why is PSC here at Albany today?
- [49:52]
Liz Stevenson
So psc, I'm on the legislative committee of the PSC and many folks from our committee as well as other PSC members have come to Albany because we really want to see fair taxation in New York State. You know, right now a lot of millionaires and billionaires are not paying their fair share, especially as a result of Trump's tax cuts. And, and that means that we're not seeing the services we need. And certainly at cuny, we're not seeing the funding that we need to make our schools quality schools with safe and healthy facilities. Students are not getting the services that they need. Class sizes are large. So we want to see more full time faculty, we want to see more academic advisors, we want to see more mental health counselors. And just generally we want to see better facilities for cuny. And we know that the only way that we can get the funding that we need for many services, including cuny, is by taxing the rich. We really need to raise revenue in the state.
- [50:48]
Garrison Davis
So there's the three tax bills, the income, the corporate and the New York City specific one. But on the PSA flyers there's also another bill or act that is being pushed for specifically to help CUNY get more funding. Could you talk about that aspect of the, of the fight here?
- [51:06]
Liz Stevenson
Sure. A little known former state legislator named Zoran Mamdani wrote this bill called the Repair Act. And what the Repair act would do is allow the state to collect property taxes from NYU and Columbia and then use that money to fund public higher education like cuny. So right now, you know, as teachers, technically as nonprofits, NYU and Columbia do 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. NYU and 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 cuny.
- [52:03]
Garrison Davis
Liz also told me that PSEC is fighting for a quote unquote New Deal for Couney because for the past few decades there's been divestment in public higher education across the country and especially in New York under Cuomo. Cooney suffered from defunding and is now currently suffering from chronic understaffing and, and facilities in decay, all while student enrollment has increased. Teachers have resigned or retired and not been replaced. And so PSC is fighting for a renewed investment 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 Couney is also fighting for the first 60 credits to be free for all students. Once the crowd outside managed to find a way to enter the capital 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 Capitol 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 Capitol staff while they were on their own lunch break as they walked around the Empire State Plaza and 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.
- [54:13]
Robert Evans
Tax the rich.
- [54:14]
Mia Wong
Tax the rich.
- [54:16]
James Stout
Tax the rich. Tax the rich.
- [54:24]
Garrison Davis
That is the current state of the Tax the Rich corridor.
- [54:35]
Mia Wong
Which side are you on? Kathy Hill?
- [54:46]
Garrison Davis
Around 3pm the crowd left the corridor, boarded buses outside the Capitol complex, and rode back to New York City just in time to catch the sunset. Meanwhile, at a press conference on Pre K and 3K enrollment, Mayor Zoran Mamdani was asked about his absence from from the Albany Tax the Rich rally.
- [55:10]
James Stout
Hey, Mayor, how you doing?
- [55:11]
Danielle Kantor
There's a Tax the Rich rally today in Albany. You're not there, obviously, even though taxing the rich has been one of your
- [55:18]
James Stout
consistent calls to raise revenue for the city. So I'm wondering if you could talk
- [55:22]
Danielle Kantor
a little bit about why you decided not to be there. Were you worried about irking the governor on this issue? And secondly, do you think it disappoints
- [55:30]
James Stout
people in this movement that you've called for that?
- [55:33]
Danielle Kantor
But you're, you're, you're not necessarily at this rally.
- [55:35]
Mayor Zoran Mamdani
So I make it clear time and time again that I believe in the importance of taxing the wealthiest New Yorkers that little bit more, as well as the most profitable corporations, and doing so while also ending the drain that has long characterized our city's fiscal relationship with the state. And I've said this both because it's important to create a fairer tax system and also because of the fact that we're facing a $5.4 billion 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 her partnership in that, and I know we have a long budget process to go through, and I'm encouraged by the beginnings of it.
- [56:28]
Garrison Davis
Rally attendance was lower than organizers hoped. The early morning start and blizzard a few days prior likely affected turnout, though as already discussed, many unions did sign on to the action and send representative members Organizing on a grand scale right after what's perceived as a huge victory, like winning an election can actually be difficult even for a group like Our Time that's working to use the organizing apparatus that got Mamdani elected to help enact his policy agenda. 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 25,000 tax the rich letters to state legislators by the end of January, but as of now their website lists under 7,000 letters sent. But the Albany takeover protest was just the opening act. The state budget is set to be finalized by March 31st 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 social media and org websites March 5th through the 10th or March 7th through the 14th. But regardless, between the 5th and the 14th the there are organized actions happening across the five boroughs and statewide in Buffalo, Hudson Valley, Ithaca, Rochester, Syracuse and Westchester. There'll be door knocking, phone banking, collecting petition signatures and a kickoff happy hour social at SOLAS in the east village on Thursday, March 5. To quote from our time quote, what happens in Albany this winter will shape Zoron's first year in office and determine whether working families 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 beyond running the biggest city in the country As a secondary goal, Mamdani 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.
- [59:56]
James Stout
Hi everyone and welcome to the show. I'm joined today by Gordain, who's a journalist from Kurdistan who's been based in Germany. And we're going to discuss the bombing of Iran. How are you, Gorin?
- [60:08]
Gordain (Gordian)
Hello. Thank you again for inviting me. And yeah, I'm ready to talk about what's happening in Iran right now.
- [60:17]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah, it's a lot, a lot is happening. I mean, we should begin, I suppose, by if someone happens to have been avoiding the news and has somehow managed to avoid learning what is happening, can we give like a small summary of the events that have happened since Friday night? US time.
- [60:38]
Gordain (Gordian)
So, yeah, it was early morning around eight, nine in the morning in Iran time that the Israeli army attacked the center of Tehran where Ali Khamenei's house, which is known as the leader's house, was located. And apparently the Iranian officials were having a very important meeting there. And following that, there were more attacks across Tehran and other cities. And by night, as the attacks were going on, as the strikes were going on, Benjamin NETanyahu came on TV and he said that I have some news, I have some information that confirms that Ali Khamenei 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 uae, they attacked Qatar, they attacked Bahrain, they attacked Iraq and they attacked also Iraqi Kurdistan region. And they were just mainly targeting the US bases 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, 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 Iraq, Kurdistan region. And at the same time, there are the, the Kurdish parties from Iran who are based there. And the regime has been seeing them as, as one of the major threats since decades. So since the beginning of the, 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 buildings 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 sky. Some people were lightly injured or some buildings were damaged. But yeah, still it's a crazy thing to see because previously in, in the past years, Iran had attacked Erbil several times and also other regions, but the US or the other countries that were there, they didn't really intercepted the drones or the missiles is also something new that we're seeing. It's also important to know that Iran has also attacked Cyprus. Like British military bases were targeted there, but the drones or the missiles were sent from Lebanon. What's going on right now is a 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 like a lot. I've seen videos, I've seen footage, I've seen reports that some random checkpoints on some remote places, especially in Kurdistan, were 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 are mainly focused on these major attacks. Major, major developments like, yeah, they're attacking Dubai, they're attacking Doha. These are all happening. And of course the civilians, they're 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 missile or a drone.
- [65:46]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [65:46]
Gordain (Gordian)
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 Iran, but inside Iran, there is Massive bombings everywhere, wherever the IRGCT or the intelligence service has a facility. And at the same time, the regime has cut off the Internet. Even 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 IRGC bases and intelligence facilities that were some of the most important ones in western side of Iran, or as we call it, Iranian Kurdistan or Rochelat, 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 its. 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 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. Yeah, they're just trying to stay safe. But at the same time, in major cities like Burmea, 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 in 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. And a lot of people are going 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 going to get bigger, if it's going to scale it. So how are they going to deal with all these shortages? Yeah, there is one more topic that I want to talk about. I also wrote about it a little bit earlier. I published some text. It's the topic of ordinary soldiers.
- [69:51]
James Stout
Yeah. Explain that to people, the civilians who
- [69:54]
Gordain (Gordian)
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 above 18 years old that are forced into the military service because it's mandatory in Iran, and they are forced into the service and they 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 Kurdistan, 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 24, 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 was, he just, he was listed, like, I don't know, about five months ago or so. And then he was in a military base between Tabriz and Urmia, and their base was targeted. Luckily, the sleeping quarters were not targeted. It was just where the commanders were, I think, staying. And I mean, I couldn't talk to him, but he told my cousin who I Called like two days ago. He said that the moment that it was bombed, everybody just ran out and then everybody went back in and they, they took all their belongings and backpacks and they just left the military base and they went home without telling the supervisor or something. And they were not, they're, 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 bases and they are absolutely not a part of the regime. There are just civilians who are forced into this. So that's also something that I think 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.
- [72:25]
James Stout
Yeah, let's take a little break for advertisements and we'll come back because I'd like to discuss more of that, like the structure of the Iranian state and who is and is not like part of it. Okay, we are back. So I think that would be a really good place for us to do some deep dives would be people understand this part of the world through the lens of states because they understand the world through the lens of states because they have been raised in a state system. But I don't think that it's 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 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 an 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 regime. So could you perhaps explain 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 regime's armed forces and repressive forces are right in the middle of town, right next to civilian buildings. So perhaps we could explain the consequences of that for civilians as bombs are falling on these facilities.
- [74:14]
Gordain (Gordian)
Yeah. So if I want to explain how the Iranian state system is, I would say simply compare it to a full monarchy, but with a Different label. Yeah, there is king who owns all of the power and there are the people who are around him that also share some bits of power with him. And there is the army that is in full man of the leader or the people around him. So this is simply something like that if I want to make it very, very simple. But the Iranian state structure is actually quite complicated. You know, they follow some sort of religious hierarchy that the supreme leader is the representative of God on earth and he is leading the Muslim nation until the Imam Mahdi, the savior of the world comes from the skies and saves the world and brings peace. So this is what they actually believe. So the supreme leader is actually the person 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 decides on the interests of the regime which consists of some high level clerics or the mullahs who are on a higher social level. And at the same time there is also council of 12 people. Six of them are mullahs, 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 regimes 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. Yeah, I mean I'm not talking about like, I don't know, the things that are decided in a city council or like very low level, I'm talking about the national interests or things like that or who's going to be the next president for example. But basically that parliamentary system or those counselings are basically non functional. They're just there for a show. And at the same time, especially in the past decades, the irgc, it's not only a military force that, 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 IRGC 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 on. And this is how the Structure is in Iran. And I think this is what makes Iran very different from other states 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 Saddam Hussein system or in Libya or in Syria, 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, IRGC always has a specific organization office in, in every facility.
- [78:37]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [78:38]
Gordain (Gordian)
It's supposed to recruit people to join the, 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, they are still fighting back. They're still. Even though Israel and America have destroyed majority of their military bases and facilities, but they're still fighting back. This is also important to understand, I think.
- [79:21]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah. And like with it being a little bit unclear, like who is still alive, especially in that top end of the pyramid. Right. Like, we know Hamani is dead, or we know. We're pretty sure he's dead. Iran has announced he's dead. We know that other people within that religious leadership and political leadership structure are dead. We know that they struck the assembly of Experts today, which could have removed a good number more of those religious leaders. Like what they did in Venezuela was that they found somebody who was no less repressive but was amenable to duty doing what they wanted, specifically with resources, specifically with oil. We run the risk of a similar thing happening in Iran, of 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. That's a real worry. They will find someone who they think they can do business with. That's what they wanted in Venezuela. Iran and Venezuela are different. They are both allied, but they're very different countries. But that's a real worry for people.
- [80:34]
Gordain (Gordian)
Yeah, I think it's also like with Venezuela, it's completely different right now because with Venezuela, America had a clear person, as you said, that he or she is going to be the next leader or whatever.
- [80:50]
James Stout
Yeah. Del C. Rodriguez.
- [80:52]
Gordain (Gordian)
But with Iran, it's not really clear yet. You know, the so called Prince Pahlavi, he is, he is always on tv, always on, on his social media saying that I'm gonna come back, I'm gonna do this and that. 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.
- [81:17]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [81:18]
Gordain (Gordian)
And on the other side there are the ethnic groups, especially Kurds, Baluchis and the Arabs. They're, they're like better organized compared to other ethnic groups. And then today we just saw that Trump has made phone calls with the Kurdish leaders of these parties and the other parties in Iraqi Kurdistan. This means something. And so, yeah, 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 Iran. We're just waiting to see what's going to happen in the upcoming weeks because it's just a few days that the war is going on. The entire region is in a shock. It's still not clear that how people are going to decide on their future now because the war is still going on and it's on a very, very high level.
- [82:12]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [82:12]
Gordain (Gordian)
So of course it's, it's also like, even when I, when I was talking to my family the other day, they were telling me, I mean, most people in Kurdistan, I would say majority of the people in Kurdistan, they don't want monarchy back. Of course they, they don't want another form of dictatorship. And they would say, yeah, we want anyone to be installed, but not this guy, not, not this Reza Pahlavi. We don't want him. Anyone is better than him.
- [82:39]
Vicky Osterweil
Yeah.
- [82:39]
Gordain (Gordian)
So this is also something. And I think, yeah, probably if they want to install Reza Pahla, the ethnic groups will not accept it and there is going to be more resistance and therefore more wars.
- [82:53]
James Stout
Yeah. Let's take another break and we'll talk a little bit about that. Maybe specifically the Kurdish situation, as I know it's of interest to both of us. All right, we are back. So, yeah, you mentioned this piece, right. There was an article, it was a very poorly written article, I will say. For instance, it seemed to think that Talabani and Barzani were Iranian. But nonetheless the central thrust of it was correct that Trump has communicated with the KDP and the puk. I understand this is like a lot of acronyms coming at people, so maybe we can just say, like, political parties in Iraqi Kurdistan, southern Kurdistan, 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 homogenous entity with one political interest, which is not the case. But like, for America to fully remove this regime and Israel, it needs either a partner force or to be willing to commit thousands of its own soldiers to fight and know that hundreds of them will die. Right. Like did in Iraq, I guess, 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. The Eastern Kurdistan resistance groups and the alliance that they've recently formed. Where are they standing right now? I know they released a statement yesterday, but can you explain that a little bit to people?
- [84:38]
Gordain (Gordian)
There are several parties across Eastern Kurdistan, or as they say, Iranian Kurdistan, and of course they're very diverse and each of them have a different ideology. That's very normal.
- [84:51]
James Stout
Yes.
- [84:52]
Gordain (Gordian)
What happened in the past few months was that it's also a very great development for our people, at least, because they have been also calling for, for a form of cooperation between these parties. And they finally announced that of course, two parties like the Comala 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 Reza Pahlavi published a statement and he threatened Kurdish people that if they think about autonomy or, I don't know, thinking about taking parts of Iran's oil, 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 Mohtari from the Kamala, 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. Uh, they're fully prepared. And what I know is that they are telling me that they're prepared that the, the. 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, to enter. And probably if, if it's going to be bigger than that. Then maybe they could take over the controls of the city. 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, schools, 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 thousands of its members, I think there are. The Kurds are ready to fight. They have been ready to fight for. Forever, for decades.
- [87:44]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [87:45]
Gordain (Gordian)
So this is also like something that the Kurdish people already know, that if we want to get rid of this regime, we have to sacrifice more. For me, it's very painful to say this, but I think our people have to sacrifice a little bit more. More than that. They. They have been sacrificing for over 150 years, 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 15, 16 years of cooperation between America and. And the Kurds in Rojava in Syria, and the fight against isis, which was. Which was a great opportunity for Kurdish people, but at the end, Trump just let Kurds down and didn't really support them against Turkey, against all these jihadist 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 Reza Pahlavi or other Iranian figures that, of course, are not after Kurdish people's interests? What if somebody like Saad comes in power and then the same situation goes on and. 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. Yeah, what will happen is America's exact plan. It could be something like Iraqi Kurdistan, which could benefit the ethnic groups a lot. Of course there's still going to be civil war, probably there's going to 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, IRGC bases, intelligence offices or facilities, they are all located in civilian areas in the cities, in the city centers all over Iran and also Kurdistan. 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.
- [91:06]
James Stout
And yeah, yeah, yeah, it's, it's such a difficult thing because like it's what, four or five weeks ago that we saw the STG and groups affiliate, Syrian Transitional Government and groups affiliated with it, like live streaming them killing and mutilating the remains of captured Kurdish men and women in Deir EZ Zor. Right. Like a place where maybe it wasn't a desire to 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, won't you just send 10,000 more of your children to die so you can liberate people in Tehran and then we'll leave you again. Yeah, I was just thinking about like a couple 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 Anfaal, the genocide against the Kurdish people committed by the Ba'ath Estate. And then they have the 1991 uprising and then they have a lot of Commemoration of the battle against the Islamic State. And like, for my entire life the Americans have been leaving Kurdish people to die and then urging them to rise up again. And it is just, it's an incredible 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 fill up their end of the bargain.
- [92:50]
Gordain (Gordian)
Yeah, that's unfortunately true. And yeah, this has been evident in the past few years as well. Like in Syria when America gave the green light to Turkey to invade Rojava. And also recently that how they just abandoned Kurds. Of course they are still saying, no, we didn't abandon Kurds, but they did. And we basically lost almost everything that we had gained in Rojava. And there is also like a threat against Iraqi Kurdistan region right now from Turkey and also from Iraq. And it's just bitter truth that, yeah, apparently Kurds are not considered as a long term partner for the US and also the other Western countries. But like all these horrible things that have been happening to our people in the past 100 years, 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.
- [93:57]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [93:58]
Gordain (Gordian)
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 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, that has been prosecuting the Kurds. It's been centuries that our people are trapped between these powers, the Turks, Persians 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 displaced 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 regional powers are planning for these things and how their interests actually matter. Like we talked about Rojava, if America, if Turkey or NATO and other Arab countries were not backing the new Syrian government, I would call it Syrian Arab government because that's how they identify themselves.
- [95:14]
James Stout
Yeah, that's still the Syrian Arab Republic, even a year and a bit later.
- [95:18]
Gordain (Gordian)
Yeah, if it was only Kurdish forces and the new government, trust me, they would not be able to enter all the territories controlled by sdf because SDF is Way more advanced and more powerful than them, like military wise. But SDF was left alone and there was so much pressure on SDF from all the Arab countries, Turkey and also Western countries in America. So this, this whole thing, like maybe this is a little bit unrealistic, but a lot of 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, 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, the Iranian structure also remains, probably they would also change course and then cooperate with, with America or, or Israel or NATO or Arab countries only to, to remain in power and maintain their interests.
- [96:38]
James Stout
Yeah, it's a really difficult time if people are looking to stay informed on this. Right. Coverage in the US has been poor in the English language. Where would you suggest, where can people follow your work and where would you suggest people. People look to stay informed on what's happening?
- [96:55]
Gordain (Gordian)
Yeah, I personally don't post a lot. I'm just trying to gather information and like be up to date and then share it with other media that are asking me about and other journalists. But there are several pages that I can suggest. One of them is definitely our organization, Hangao Hangout Organization for Human Rights. I would also suggest to follow news channels like Rudolph, which they have been working really good on this, on this war. It's a Kurdish TV channel based in Iraqi Kurdistan. I would also suggest to follow the social media pages belonging to the Kurdish parties like KDPI or Komala, just like their official pages on Twitter or X for example. They post a lot of really good information. I would also suggest. I, I think I also suggested in our last talk there is this person called Vaheet Online. He is an independent journalist and he has like some really big platforms and he posts of a lot, 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 Merdi. 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 Persian, 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 revolution or the war or whatever like that's happening inside Iran and Kurdistan. So, yeah, these are the things that I can suggest so far.
- [99:05]
James Stout
Yeah, those are great suggestions. Thank you. Well, thank you very much for joining us today. We'll, we'll get this out as soon as possible because I know people are very interested to know more about it. Thanks, Gordie.
- [99:15]
Gordain (Gordian)
Yeah, thanks for inviting me. Till next time.
- [99:31]
Mia Wong
Welcome to Jake D Here, a podcast about the consolidation of capital into increasingly centralized forms and how it's ruined your life. I am your host, Mia Wong, and with me today to talk about how the consolidation of media monopolies has ruined many, many, many, many, many things for many years is Vicky Osterweil, friend of the show, Author of forthcoming April 14, 2026, the Extended How Disney Killed the Movies and Took over the World. Vicki, welcome to the show.
- [100:05]
Vicky Osterweil
Thanks. It's so great to be back. Thank you, Mia. I'm excited to talk about something a little less depressing than the things we could be talking about.
- [100:12]
Mia Wong
Slightly less depressing.
- [100:13]
Vicky Osterweil
Very mildly less depressing.
- [100:15]
Mia Wong
You know, like this is a story, obviously the story that we're talking about here foremost is Paramount's acquisition of Warner Bros. Or forthcoming acquisition. Since Netflix has backed out. It technically still could fail, but seems very, very unlikely to. And you know, you could tell things are going great 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 commissar they're going to put in charge of CNN is going to be who's there. Very wise. So things going very good? Yeah, as you can tell.
- [100:53]
Vicky Osterweil
Oh, my God.
- [100:55]
Mia Wong
But you, you, you had the most cursed name that I've heard so far.
- [100:59]
Vicky Osterweil
Oh, yeah, Tim. Yeah. Tim Pool, I think is probably the most cursed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That would be the most. It's a dark horse candidate. I don't know. What are the numbers on polymarket? Should we look who's. Who's a frown. Should we pull it up?
- [101:13]
Mia Wong
I, they, they've probably. That's probably up now, which I hate. I, I refuse to check Polymarket. Even if I could know facts ahead of time, I simply will not. They can't make me. Oh, God.
- [101:26]
Vicky Osterweil
But we're not talking about insider trading war crimes, we're talking about insider trading intellectual properties. So that's, that's pretty good.
- [101:31]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [101:32]
Mia Wong
Yeah. Woo. Okay, so to start, let's go back a ways and do you want to talk about, I guess, sort of the beginning of the history of what we're talking about here, which is the consolidation of all media into a handful of increasingly large conglomerates.
- [101:51]
Vicky Osterweil
Yeah, absolutely. So in a way, like consolidation is the entire history of the movie business. So obviously what, what's happening here with Paramount, which is one of the old, just one of the old five studios, merging with Warner Brothers, that leaves Disney and Paramount, Warner Brothers as Sony, as the three companies that release movies. Is this good?
- [102:17]
Mia Wong
It's only three.
- [102:18]
Vicky Osterweil
A24.
- [102:19]
Mia Wong
A24 is going to get bought like three weeks from now.
- [102:22]
Danielle Kantor
Oh God.
- [102:23]
Vicky Osterweil
And Netflix and Amazon are the new studios and Netflix was in competition for this and withdrew, as you said. Anyways, but like one of the things that the very beginning of the Hollywood system, Hollywood starts because Thomas Edison. So now we're going way back, right? The 1890s.
- [102:40]
Mia Wong
Oh God. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of, speaking of dude. To ruthlessly consolidated their power. He's like, we're of intellectual property.
- [102:46]
Vicky Osterweil
Precisely.
- [102:47]
Mia Wong
Dear God.
- [102:48]
Vicky Osterweil
So Thomas Edison is credited in the US with inventing the movie camera. He is one of five or six people in the world who came up with technology around the same time. It's just not linearly possible to name any of them as the inventor of the movie camera. But he gets that credit because he sued the shit out of everyone who tried to make a movie for 15 years. Jesus Christ. So he puts patents on the movie camera. He puts 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 15 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. 99% of them are lost to time. We can't even watch these movies.
- [103:41]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [103:42]
Vicky Osterweil
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. Jesus Christ. It was eventually too hard to maintain this. So what he did is he teamed up with the other large independents and Eastman Kodak and they formed a thing, I think it's called the Motion picture company, which is then referred 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. Right.
- [104:28]
Mia Wong
This is such a good system, by the way. Like, I just like, like the system of property rights. So good. No problems here.
- [104:37]
Vicky Osterweil
So what happens? What happens? A bunch of filmmakers move to this new land development out in California called Hollywood. You know, it's 1907. They're really far away from New Jersey. Lawyers at Edison Goons, right. They're as far as possible. So Hollywood is founded by a bunch of movie pirates, basically. Right.
- [104:58]
Mia Wong
That's incredible.
- [104:59]
Vicky Osterweil
Who are violating, you know, Edison's copyright because they're sick of the. Of his. Of his legal harassment.
- [105:04]
Mia Wong
So it's some real. The mountains are high in the Emperor's far away shit.
- [105:07]
Danielle Kantor
Yeah, yeah.
- [105:08]
Vicky Osterweil
I mean, exactly. Literally, how far can we get away while still being on the continent? Like, that's, you know, let's do it from New Jersey, which, like many such cases, many people.
- [105:16]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah.
- [105:17]
Vicky Osterweil
That far away from New Jersey before. But. So jumping forward into the classical Hollywood period, we're more familiar with. There are sort of five major studios. 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 of 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 soundstage. You employ all the people who work on it. You employ 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 in those instances, they didn't always own those companies, those chemical companies. This is not important. But, you know, and then you own the movie theater where it's shown. Right? So like movie theaters before the 40s, you would go to a RKO Pictures house. RKO is one of the early big ones. Or a United Artist Theater. And they would only show United Artists movies.
- [106:14]
James Stout
Jesus Christ.
- [106:14]
Vicky Osterweil
So there 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 antitrust action done in the 40s that breaks up these studios. The studio system sort of slowly collapses. They also then lose a lot of market share to television. This is a really pot end history, but I'm trying to give it as much as possible. So basically, so by the 60s or 70s, what you have is a lot of independent producers. So the studio's just become a brand new and a sort of pot of money and often, 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 60 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.
- [107:09]
Garrison Davis
Christ.
- [107:10]
Vicky Osterweil
This is the studio system. So then by the 60s and 70s, it's starting to look more like what you have now, which is the studios are basically, they are the homes of all the producers. The producers are people who connect the money and the talent and put it all together and package a deal and then 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 70s. We're going so fast right now. I'm trying my best, but I'm sorry, this is.
- [107:43]
Mia Wong
No, you're. Yeah, this is like. I was like, here, let's talk about like 150 years of history.
- [107:52]
Vicky Osterweil
So anyways, with the emergence of the blockbusters, one of the other things that happens is that the way blockbusters work is that they are released everywhere in the country at once. Film comes on used to come on literal physical objects and you can only have so many. And they can only be so many places at once, right? So the way film used to work is they would make a certain number of film reels. If they thought 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'd 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 fast here. I'm 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 release, in the early window. Opening weekend was not very meaningful until the 80s, really. You know, late 70s, early 80s, as that happens, 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. I can't get into that, but yeah, we can't. And then Reagan deregulates everything, right? Reagan. Reagan rips apart the FCC in many ways deregulates media ownership stuff. This is a big move. Then across the 80s, the home market opens, so you start getting VCRs, and this completely transforms the business another time. Because movies can flop in the theater, but you can guarantee rentals, right? So for like the 80s and the 90s, the big studios kind of could print money because it was pretty hard to lose money on a movie. Now the people who lost money on movies were like, you know, dentists from the Midwest who they get to invest in and be like, oh yeah, you can, sorry. Like those arcane deals, people still got rinsed. Obviously it was Hollywood, it was shady as hell. But as.
- [109:57]
Danielle Kantor
So.
- [109:57]
Vicky Osterweil
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, of like Lucas films, that they also get really into computers. Lucas, George Lucas famously is into like the computer side of the business. All these different technologies get brought into the cinema at the same time as it gets deregulated. So companies start snatching up these other film studios, right? And so where once there were five studios and then the 60s and 70s, you actually have a ton of independent studios, a lot of really small ones, and they start getting gobbled up by these bigger conglomerates. You know, Sony is the one that was also a mega Corp. In the 80s already 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 FCC 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 broadcast rules 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 all at once.
- [111:03]
Mia Wong
Oh, good God.
- [111:04]
Vicky Osterweil
And as you can imagine, that is how things started. Accelerate. You get like the ABC, Disney merger in the late 80s, NBC, Universal. Mergers and acquisitions become the big thing. You know, the stock market is booming. Then you get other big corps buying them out. And then we're just in the, the classic phase of consolidation where bigger and bigger fish eat up the smaller ones.
- [111:25]
Mia Wong
And this is how, I guess importantly for this story, suddenly, like all of the television news media is owned by these giant ass movie companies which.
- [111:35]
Gordain (Gordian)
Exactly.
- [111:36]
Mia Wong
Surely nothing will go wrong.
- [111:37]
Vicky Osterweil
Well, yeah, and we, and we come to you here from iHeartRadio, which you know, is a, is a lovely brand of.
- [111:43]
Mia Wong
Technically speaking, we are Ihear.
- [111:46]
Vicky Osterweil
Okay, sorry, sorry, excuse me.
- [111:47]
Mia Wong
A technically distinct company, I think. Actually don't ask me to explain exactly how that whole.
- [111:53]
Vicky Osterweil
Right.
- [111:53]
Mia Wong
Media. I hear radio split works, but exactly.
- [111:56]
Vicky Osterweil
You know, so media consolidation, this is, you know, consolidation is the story of capitalism. Famously right, like that. Like, you know, an industry builds, lots of new entrepreneurs come into the space. People figure out what's possible with the industry. As more and more money flows in, a few winners come and consolidate. We've seen it happen in tech as well, but yeah, it has particularly perverse effects when we're talking about the visual culture, the audio culture 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 controlled things. I think that's pretty, pretty obvious.
- [112:33]
Mia Wong
Oh, yeah, it is extremely bad, I would say.
- [112:38]
Vicky Osterweil
You might say it's extremely bad. You know, a lot of people are very upset about the news that David Ellison, who is the Nepo baby to end all Nepo babies, because he's not a Hollywood Nepo baby. He's not the son of a previous. He's just the son of a rich guy who wanted to be in movies. So he bought his way into like acting roles and then he like just threw money around until he got Skydance Global, which is this company that, you know, he's been in Hollywood for 10 years. Technically, he's like an experienced producer. This man is 43 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 are Trump allies. He has literally said I'm going to make more right wing movies. You know, like, you know, the Daily, Daily Wire, you know, they, 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.
- [113:48]
Gordain (Gordian)
Yeah.
- [113:49]
Vicky Osterweil
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, 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 is a really dark fact and 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 by boomers.
- [114:29]
Gordain (Gordian)
Dying.
- [114:30]
Mia Wong
Jesus Christ.
- [114:31]
Vicky Osterweil
So basically it is a literally dying. It is a literally dying market. The only people who still pay for cable other than institutional forces are like people above 60 and they're just literally dying. And the price goes up as more and more of them die. It is, it is over as a business. Cable, even espn. Disney is trying to get rid of espn. Right. Even sports are valueless now. Not valueless. I mean, it's still billions of dollars, obviously, but to these, to these goals.
- [114:56]
Mia Wong
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, if you look at what ESPN's like try to do about this, they're like just turning into an influencer factory.
- [115:02]
Vicky Osterweil
Yeah.
- [115:02]
Mia Wong
With just like Rich Eisen and like all of these fucking unhinged dipshits.
- [115:08]
Vicky Osterweil
Exactly. So anyway, so people are pretty like despairing about it because they think it's about cnn. But if it was just about CNN like I said, they could have just waited and gotten it for a song. David Ellison really thinks he's a. He's cosplaying as a movie producer, but because he has so much money, he's succeeding of the movies he's produced that you might like. Although I didn't like it. But a lot of people like Top Gun Maver, Maverick, like, it's fun, I guess.
- [115:29]
Mia Wong
Like that's everything about that movie suddenly just like clicks into focus.
- [115:33]
Vicky Osterweil
It's like, oh, I just want you to know that Top Gun Maverick is the greatest work of art that he produced by some extreme margin. This guy's responsible for Terminators 5 and 6. That would be Dark Fate and Genesis.
- [115:47]
Mia Wong
Oh, no.
- [115:48]
Vicky Osterweil
He produced Geostorm, which you may remember came too late to capitalize on the disaster thing. In 2017, he made the Gemini man movie, which is when Will Smith fought Will Smith with weird aging technology.
- [116:01]
Mia Wong
Oh, I vaguely remember seeing TV commercials without that.
- [116:06]
Vicky Osterweil
It kind of killed Will Smith's marketability as a star. Like, that was kind of the film, like after Earl did that Shyama. But he's responsible for ending Will Smith. He did the Spy Kids reboot, which Spy kids Armageddon from 2023. No, this guy has made just really bad movies.
- [116:26]
Mia Wong
All of these weird right wing people are all like, the thing they want to do is make movies. This is like, what's like killing the Daily Wire is that they decided to be a movie company and it turns out they can't make movies. But it's like this guy is like, what if you had that, but backed by like the entire tech capital apparatus and your dad was fucking Larry Ellison, the Oracle guy. Like one of the richest test fascists who's ever lived.
- [116:49]
Vicky Osterweil
Then you can do it. Then you can just buy yourself a movie studio and you can do it because the thing movies need is money.
- [116:54]
Mia Wong
And then you can keep buying other movie studios.
- [116:58]
Vicky Osterweil
But, and this is a bit contrarian, I'm not sure that this is worse for movies than Netflix getting it because Netflix would have likely sabotaged what was remaining of WB's theatrical business model. Right? Like Netflix doesn't like the theater now they've been trying to get into theatrical because that's like, you know, it's cash on the table. You know, it's how you build it's greatest marketing on earth. Right? And you, when you have a big hit film, then that's a franchise. You get TV shows, you get theme parks, you get, you know, lunch boxes, you know, toys, T shirts, you get resales, you get a reboot 10 years down the line. Right. You get licensing. So they want that.
- [117:43]
James Stout
But.
- [117:43]
Vicky Osterweil
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 was this 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 Cilla and Charybdis kind of situation. Yeah, 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 point being, people are very upset about this news because it's happened new and 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 30 years late to this being a problem. Like, I'm not trying to be. Like, I'm not trying to be like that.
- [118:24]
Garrison Davis
Whatever.
- [118:24]
Mia Wong
Like, no, yeah, like, but, like, we are.
- [118:28]
Vicky Osterweil
Well, but like, having three movie studios instead of two, like, you're already doing pretty bad.
- [118:34]
Mia Wong
Like, yeah.
- [118:35]
Vicky Osterweil
In the 30s, as I gave you, in that little part of history, in the 30s, Hollywood was so brutally integrated that they literally. The federal government literally broke it apart at the height. At the height of the studio system. The biggest company at the time, which I believe was MGM, was the big studio, controlled 18% of the market, of the film market, which is massive. I mean, the market of anything, 18% of the market is obscene, hideous. Yeah. Disney, in a bunch of the past years, has run 40% of the market worldwide. Worldwide, not just domestic. So, like, we are already at this level of concentration. Like, the fact that it's. 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?
- [119:27]
Gordain (Gordian)
Yeah.
- [119:27]
Vicky Osterweil
I think it's 37. I think it's actually only 37%.
- [119:31]
Mia Wong
37.
- [119:32]
Robert Evans
Oh, wow. Wow.
- [119:33]
Danielle Kantor
Yeah.
- [119:33]
Mia Wong
3%. Huge difference.
- [119:34]
Vicky Osterweil
I rounded up. I'm sorry about that.
- [119:36]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [119:37]
Mia Wong
Yeah. Well, and this is something I think gets back to one of the sort of political answers that I've been seeing to. This is like, you know, this return from kind of like the left of the Democratic Party to being like, oh, we should talk about, like, anti monopoly and we should do, like, trust busting again. 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.
- [120:05]
Garrison Davis
You know, this is.
- [120:05]
Gordain (Gordian)
This is.
- [120:06]
Mia Wong
The problem is that this is. This is basically a structural problem of capital. Is this kind of consolidation. 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.
- [120:24]
Gordain (Gordian)
Yeah.
- [120:24]
Mia Wong
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 aren't regulatory conditions. Those are. Hold on. Why are people allowed to own this shit?
- [120:43]
Vicky Osterweil
Yeah, and I think that's exactly right. And I think, you know, one of the things about monopolization, which is famous. One of the things that even capitalists don't like about monopolies is that the quality goes down famously, right? Because you don't. You don't. You don't have to compete. Whatever. There's literally no reason to try and make 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 their. Its 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, it is in your logical material interest to serve. 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, I think he's. I think he has sold to. To hypnosis or one of these big. There are these big music investment firms that own the. The rights to all of these old songs. If you guys. If y' all remember, in 2018, 2019, all movie trailers suddenly started having weird, sad girl covers of, like, 60s and 70s pop songs. Do you remember this era?
- [122:10]
Mia Wong
Oh, yeah.
- [122:10]
Gordain (Gordian)
Yeah.
- [122:11]
Vicky Osterweil
Like a sad guitar girl. 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, oh, God, they're gonna keep the copy. 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.
- [122:31]
Mia Wong
Yeah, because it's worse too, because it's. Because the new ones are all, oh, God.
- [122:37]
Vicky Osterweil
And. And this is only possible because of the way that the streaming services got consolidated and that they pay per play. Because pay per play, as everyone knows, completely screws artists. There's just no way to make any money off that.
- [122:51]
Gordain (Gordian)
Yeah.
- [122:52]
Vicky Osterweil
But if you own a massive library like the, um, like the BMG or Sony Universal, if you own a library like that, you do nothing and you make billions a year. Yeah. Right. So it becomes this permanent, 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 based on the division between particular recording copyrights and the copyrights of, like, individual song 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, like, roll into the back of their head like a daisy. They, like, fall over and a daisy pops up like the cartoo. 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.
- [123:49]
Mia Wong
Yeah, Right.
- [123:49]
Vicky Osterweil
So the entire material structure of the world, like the psychic structure of the world, gets transformed by these weird exploits over, like, financial loopholes by the worst people on earth whose goal is to never let you hear a new song. Yeah, right. Like, they never want you to hear new music again. They just want the Boomer tracks to play forever with, like, new versions by, you know, they just want Charlie XCX to record fucking Jefferson Airplane. Like, that's their. That's their wettest dream, you know? And all that shit is going on in the background of your life. Right. Like, I mean, it's not. It's. It's. Yeah, 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.
- [124:33]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [124:33]
Mia Wong
It's like, okay, what. What happened the last time we saw, like, the completely unhinged, like, concentration of all capital monopolies? It was like, well, all that capital was liquidated by World War II. There was one as well too.
- [124:48]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [124:49]
Mia Wong
These were both, to a large extent. This is something that, you know, if you go back and read anyone who's doing any political analysis about World War I in the lead up to it. And as it's happening, the thing everyone is talking about is like, is. Is the consolidation of monopoly capital. And I think you can argue maybe that the early 1800s 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.
- [125:26]
Vicky Osterweil
But it's less far than you think because the part of the way that it outsourced this to the state and this is in this. This is all stuff from my upcoming book, which you can pre order now.
- [125:37]
Mia Wong
That's true.
- [125:38]
Vicky Osterweil
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 Makes 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.
- [126:02]
Mia Wong
Jesus Christ.
- [126:03]
Vicky Osterweil
So that if, say, Apple sees you making a fake iPhone, they have a literal legal procedure domestic to your country to force you to stop to smush those pirates. Jesus Christ. 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.
- [126:27]
Mia Wong
So, yeah, yeah.
- [126:28]
Vicky Osterweil
The company's more distributed through these world trade organizations.
- [126:30]
Mia Wong
Well, they did the Ordo liberal thing of where we're using the Supra state apparatus to negate the sovereignty of the state by creating the super state, which we run.
- [126:40]
Vicky Osterweil
Yes. So, I mean, I'm obviously interested in the IP and the cultural angle. This is the only law like this in any of these agreements. All the rest of the trade agreements, like, they can negotiate, but, like, part of what's so obscene about Trump's tariffs is that the US Already had this. It was called the Priority Watch List. They just had this list in the White House where they could just say, you're not doing a good job and of stopping piracy. And it gives the White House unilateral capacity to create trade embargoes on people without going to Congress. Like, this was already 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 country 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 Trumpist moment is that they're ripping apart their own infrastructure because they're, they literally just don't understand how it works.
- [127:47]
Mia Wong
No, it's like, it's like that you handed them an aircraft carrier and they're ripping out the copper wires and trying to sell it. And it's like you have an aircraft carrier. What are we doing?
- [127:55]
Vicky Osterweil
Yeah.
- [127:56]
Danielle Kantor
Oh God.
- [127:57]
Vicky Osterweil
Exactly. You know, so again, like, I think there is this talk about the consolidation of culture and I think like, you know, people like the Ellisons are just, they're just vulgar at it. Yeah, like the thing is like Mike Eisner was better at it. Like Bob Iger is, who is the CEO of Disney currently, although he's about to step down. Bob Iger saw them through the acquisition of Marvel and Star wars and all that. He is an incredible, I mean, you know, whatever his team even he himself is a 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 Ellison's of 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.
- [128:55]
Mia Wong
Yeah, well, and I guess it is to some extent a kind of funny like the election of Trump and also just sort of Ellison just like devouring this is what his like third studio that he's eaten in like five years. And like all, all these forces being devoured by 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.
- [129:26]
Vicky Osterweil
Right.
- [129:27]
Mia Wong
And like with Trump it's like, yeah, you fought. You finally created a monster that is large enough to shatter the extremely delicate and complicated system that you did and is also just doesn't understand it.
- [129:40]
Vicky Osterweil
Yeah, exactly. And I think like, if you want to see what the future of, of Hollywood looks like, I Mean, you know, you can go worse than to look at China. Right. China is the most dynamic film market. It overtook the US as the number one value of the box office in 2022. I think. I think it did in 2021, but that was still Covid. Shutdown affected.
- [129:58]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [129:58]
Vicky Osterweil
2022 or 2023, China became an actual. The actual plurality of ticket sales in the world by dollar, if not by number. By number. They've already long surpassed the U.S. yeah.
- [130:08]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [130:09]
Vicky Osterweil
But the way that Chinese film companies work is like they're all pretty nakedly financial companies like Tencent and Alibaba.
- [130:18]
Gordain (Gordian)
Right.
- [130:18]
Vicky Osterweil
And like, 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.
- [130:25]
Gordain (Gordian)
Yeah.
- [130:25]
Vicky Osterweil
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.
- [130:39]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [130:51]
Vicky Osterweil
The reason to talk about all of this business stuff on some level, I mean, it's interesting on its own as history, it's interesting as critique of capitalism, but I think it's also interesting because it affects the aesthetics of what the movies that get made. Right. And I think when we think about. When people think about fascist propaganda, you know, we think about the Nazis, Right. Obviously, because the Nazis had the longest running fascist propaganda machine in the world. They had the Ministry of Culture under Goebbels. Right. And I think when we talk about Nazi propaganda, we think about Triumph of the Will and we think about stuff like Juden Suss. Right. Like extremely horrifying anti Semitic bullshit.
- [131:28]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [131:29]
Vicky Osterweil
Extremely horrifying anti Semitic movies. There were two of them in the 10 years that Goebbels ran the UFA, which is the film company that made movies for Germany. The vast majority. The vast majority of films under the Reich were frothy comedies and musicals and adventure stories. Because the principle that Goebbels operated 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 UFA are not good. Like, even the ones that are like, not offensive, they're just mid. But they all do the same thing. They all work together and around a principle, 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.
- [132:27]
Gordain (Gordian)
Yeah.
- [132:28]
Vicky Osterweil
Am I allowed to cuss? I'm doing so much of it.
- [132:30]
Mia Wong
Yeah. I swear, all the time.
- [132:31]
Vicky Osterweil
Okay.
- [132:31]
Mia Wong
Thank God we are not regulated by the fcc.
- [132:35]
Vicky Osterweil
Yeah, let's go. No one is these days.
- [132:38]
Mia Wong
I mean, I guess we technically are, but we're not under the radio regulation, so we can say whatever we want.
- [132:43]
Vicky Osterweil
Perfect. Love that. But, like, fascist filmmaking has not looked like that for the most part in the history of it. Fascist filmmaking looks like family adventure fare often. And I think we have been so blinded to the way that this happens that we imagine that Ellison taking over is suddenly going to mean that now there's going to be fascist movies in theaters. But, like, have you all been to the movies?
- [133:11]
Gordain (Gordian)
Yes.
- [133:12]
Vicky Osterweil
Like, have you all seen what Warner Brothers did with, like, the Snyderverse? Like, yeah.
- [133:16]
Mia Wong
Like, did you. Did you watch the Beekeeper?
- [133:18]
Vicky Osterweil
Right.
- [133:18]
Mia Wong
Speaking of Netflix, like, that was. That was the most fascist movie I have ever seen.
- [133:22]
Gordain (Gordian)
Exactly.
- [133:23]
Mia Wong
It is literally. It is a movie that is just a guy shooting a bunch of people. And then the background superstructure is an explanation of what the Fuhrer is, which is the, like the. The force that is outside of the order, that is able to violate the rules of the order in order to. In order to create the order itself. Except it's a guy called the Beekeeper and he just shoots people. Like, it's. It's.
- [133:45]
Vicky Osterweil
That's pretty bad. That's pretty bad.
- [133:46]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [133:47]
Vicky Osterweil
I did not watch that one. And I like status.
- [133:49]
Mia Wong
It's really unhinged. I. I watched it with my family. Nightmare. Holy shit. It's going insane.
- [133:55]
Vicky Osterweil
Yeah. Things are so bad that, like, there was a movie, Nobody. With Bob Odenkirk that came out in 2019, and it was basically a parody of those, like, Liam Neeson, you know, the John Wick movies. And, like, Liam Neeson, like, dad, Men, Taken stuff, Right?
- [134:09]
Donna Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [134:10]
Vicky Osterweil
And it was a parody. You. Maybe you could be clued in by the fact it was Bob Odenkirk and it was filled with comedians. Maybe you could be clued in by the fact that he's fighting because they took his daughter's hello Kitty bracelet. Like, there's, like, pretty cool. Like. But it's dry. But it plays it dry. It plays it very dry.
- [134:24]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [134:25]
Vicky Osterweil
Every single professional film critic reviewed it like it was dead serious. Like, Bob, Jesus, become the next Liam Neeson. And part of that is because they shot good action sequences. Like, he did a good job with the satire.
- [134:39]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [134:40]
Vicky Osterweil
But then what happens? What happened next is that now there's a nobody too. And it's completely forgotten the joke. And it's not good either.
- [134:47]
Mia Wong
So like Jesus fucking Christ.
- [134:49]
Gordain (Gordian)
Yeah.
- [134:49]
Vicky Osterweil
And Bob Winenkirk just like he had this one window where he could really sell that. He couldn't sell it in the sequel. Doesn't matter.
- [134:54]
Mia Wong
No, it's, it's, it's the jarhead sequels.
- [134:56]
Vicky Osterweil
Right, Exactly. But like we're just in a time of extreme literalism.
- [135:02]
Gordain (Gordian)
Yeah.
- [135:02]
Vicky Osterweil
Where like everything is really, really like script driven. It's really on its face. It's really textual. Everything is just selling something else. Everything can possibly be sequel. Nothing really changes. Politics only exists as bureaucracy. These are all deeply fascist concepts. They're just more subtle than goose stepping SS uniforms, you know? Yeah. 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 pop. Like, yeah, Disney entertains people and makes a fascist populace. Like they're just bad filmmakers and that kind of matters.
- [135:40]
Gordain (Gordian)
Yeah.
- [135:41]
Mia Wong
I think there is a chance that like, I don't know, Ellison is such a dumbass that he just tries to do it anyways. Like, he just tries to be like, well, but even then, like, he hasn't really made like a stereotype of Nazi movies. He's made like actual Nazi movies just to say Top Gun Maverick.
- [136:02]
Danielle Kantor
Yeah.
- [136:04]
Vicky Osterweil
People love Top Gun Maverick. People were like, yeah. I guess it's maybe kind of problematic. Like, but we love, you know, it's like that movie is like literally propaganda for the Air Force. I, like, I thought it was fun.
- [136:15]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [136:16]
Vicky Osterweil
Like, don't get me wrong, but like people are. Have been really trained to not see that stuff. Yeah.
- [136:22]
Mia Wong
And it's like we're like now fighting the war that that movie was propaganda for.
- [136:25]
Vicky Osterweil
Yes, exactly.
- [136:26]
Mia Wong
Like we literally, literally are fighting. We've made it a rod. Like where we bombed a ride at
- [136:32]
Vicky Osterweil
all F15s went down for the first time. The Gulf War.
- [136:36]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [136:37]
Mia Wong
Because they got shot down by her own. By our own allies. Air defenses.
- [136:42]
Vicky Osterweil
You know why? Because we didn't have Maverick. We didn't have Tom Cruise training them. And that's what Allison's going to do. That's why I'm happy he's merging it. Because our brave boys in the skies are going to be safer.
- [136:52]
Garrison Davis
God.
- [136:53]
Vicky Osterweil
So, yeah. Anyways, I don't know where I'M going with this because obviously things are bad, and anyone betting against things getting worse over the last 10 years has lost their pants.
- [137:01]
Mia Wong
Right?
- [137:02]
Vicky Osterweil
But things can get worse. But also there is the actual object, the actual film object exists. And part of what has been hard about Hollywood, the reason they've built these monopoly structures, the reason they've built these IP 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. Do not play a violin for. For Kevin Feige. He's doing fine. You know, he's crying on yacht, you know, but, like.
- [137:48]
Mia Wong
But.
- [137:48]
Vicky Osterweil
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 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.
- [138:14]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [138:15]
Mia Wong
I want to come back to something I said a few years ago when we did a show with Gar about the people's Joker, and I saw the TV glow. Yeah, I saw the TV glow. I was about to say the one about the egg who has the bad ending and never transitions.
- [138:30]
Vicky Osterweil
Yes, the horror movie about not transitioning. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [138:34]
Mia Wong
I think there is an extent to which, you know, there was a really brief attempt to sort of sublimate transness into film for, like, one year. But, you know, like, we are the people who've been spat out of this, but also trans people are making movies at a rate that has never happened before. Like, ever. There's never been anything 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 trans film 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 $15 popcorn.
- [139:27]
Vicky Osterweil
Hey, they also sell you all expenses paid vacations. You have to go into debt for it. Okay, Mia, that support trans film. Support local film. And the thing about movies is that movies are bad, but the other thing is that movies are good.
- [139:41]
Mia Wong
So it's hard because of the dialectic in motion.
- [139:44]
Danielle Kantor
Yeah, yeah.
- [139:46]
Mia Wong
Look, I will say this. There has been for many thousands of years a second dialectic operating. And then it's a dialectic between labor and capital. That's probably. I probably backdated capital too far. But you know, fuck it. I don't know. We could resolve. We could resolve movies good and movies bad by resolving the other dialectic of capital and labor by simply destroying the categories and ending the class system. I believe in us, we can make movie good again. Movie has never been good. There can be a new future. Where movie good.
- [140:18]
Vicky Osterweil
Yeah, that's right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I believe.
- [140:22]
Mia Wong
One final thing, Vicky. Where can people find your book?
- [140:26]
Vicky Osterweil
Yes, it's being put out by Haymarket, so you can go to their website. I also have a link to my bookshop page via bluesky. I'm Vicki Acab on bluesky. So if you want to watch me posting through it, you know, come hang out, I guess. But yeah, pre order it, talk to libraries about it. Ask a local. If you have a local bookshop, asking them that stuff really helps it make a huge difference. And yeah, I would really appreciate any of that. If you're interested in how Disney destroyed the world and in the ways that we've been talking about here today, you can read way more about it.
- [141:00]
Mia Wong
Yeah. And I don't know, Vicki, Vicky's books good. Can confirm have read. They are.
- [141:05]
Danielle Kantor
They are. They're good.
- [141:21]
Robert Evans
We should have kept working on that bomb that they thought would turn the entire enemy army gay, which was the thing they really put money into.
- [141:28]
Garrison Davis
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 Mia Wong, James Stout and Robert Evans. This episode we are covering the week of February 25 to March 4. A House committee just today on Wednesday has subpoenaed AG Pambani to testify on her handling of the Epstein investigation. With five Republicans 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 told 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.
- [142:30]
Mia Wong
More on that in the episode before this one.
- [142:33]
Garrison Davis
It's insane. He just said that out loud.
- [142:35]
Mia Wong
Fun hinge.
- [142:36]
Danielle Kantor
Yeah, yeah.
- [142:38]
Garrison Davis
On Thursday, February 26, almost a year after Mahmoud Khalil was first detained, ICE agents arrested another Columbia student in the early hours of the morning. Shortly after 6am, five plainclothes 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 29 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, Mayor Mamdani 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 concern about the detention of the Columbia student. Earlier that morning, I shared my concern
- [143:50]
Mayor Zoran Mamdani
with the president about ICE's detention of Columbia student Elmina Agayeva yesterday morning, as well as the detention of four additional New Yorkers in relation to the university Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi, Yun, SEO Chung and Naka Cordia. I ask that their cases be dropped. I'm grateful that shortly after our meeting, the President called me to inform me that Elmina would be imminently released and indeed she was.
- [144:16]
Garrison Davis
The Mayor also discussed the release of Akaheva in a question during this press conference.
- [144:22]
Vicky Osterweil
During your advocacy with President Trump, what do you think the winning argument was
- [144:27]
Donna Al Kurd
and did they reverse course?
- [144:29]
Mayor Zoran Mamdani
All I can can tell you is what happened, which is that I shared directly with the President a list of names of Columbia students and those who've also been detained because of their activity on Columbia campus and that these actions do nothing to advance the cause of public safety and I asked that these cases be dropped and the President said that he would look into it. Soon after the meeting, I received a phone call from the President saying that that he was going to imminently release her.
- [144:58]
Garrison Davis
At 3:45pm, Agaheva posted on Instagram that she'd been released and was, quote, unquote, safe and okay. On Thursday night, a DHS spokesperson told a reporter that Agaheva's student visa was terminated in 2016 for failing to attend classes and that, quote, Ice placed her in removal proceedings and she's been released while she waits for her hearing, unquote. The current state of her case is unknown, with neither her lawyers nor DHS providing any follow up statements.
- [145:28]
James Stout
That last part is very confusing to me. Right. Because if she had lost her student visa for non attendance like that, that can happen. That would have shown up in Sevis.
- [145:37]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [145:37]
James Stout
And that was a decade ago. That part confused me. I just, I was scanning it right before we started and I figured I'd just ask you in the episode.
- [145:44]
Garrison Davis
But yeah, I mean, she has no pending cases with DHS in their system or no pending appeals. It's very unclear what happened here or the exact cause of why she was arrested and the state of whatever visa she's on.
- [145:58]
James Stout
Right. Yeah. She could have been on a completely different visa.
- [146:00]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, it's very unclear.
- [146:02]
James Stout
There's a lot here that I'd like to know. Many such cases, I guess. So to start with a couple of immigration things. During a Senate hearing yesterday, that's Tuesday, Christine Noem doubled down on the claim she's previously made about Alex Pretty, which are, as far as we can tell, false.
- [146:19]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [146:20]
James Stout
Saying his actions were, quote, the definition of domestic terrorism. She's in the House testifying today. So I will try and summarize both those testimonies in next week's Ed. Just, just so we don't end up covering this twice. And we've got a lot to address today. This is breaking news. Right before we release the podcast. Christine Noem, 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 Mullen. Noem 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. Mullen, for those aren't familiar, is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. He has been in the House of Representatives for 10 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 in Response? DHS has claimed that, quote, federal officials acting in the course of their duties 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 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. A, the federal officials actions authorized under federal law and B, that they are, quote, necessary and proper in the execution of their duties as a federal officer. I will link in the sources of our document to a 10th Circuit case on this. The case was about some federal wildlife officers who had crossed onto private land during a wolf collaring operation in Wyoming and then Wyoming attempted to prosecute them for trespassing.
- [148:22]
Garrison Davis
Right.
- [148:22]
James Stout
So we can see like a previous example of this. But. 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. I work so hard on these.
- [148:42]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [148:42]
James Stout
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 on things that happened in the 24 hours since we recorded that. Firstly, it seems that the attacks, or at least their timing, was heavily driven by Israel, who were likely acting on intelligence about the whereabouts of her. Mainly the attacks occurred in the daytime, which is pretty unusual. Like normally they'll 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 aircrafts that they're using. Right. I also wanted to point out, so that the source for this Israel claim, let's start there, comes from the Rapid Response 47 account. I guess I describe that as like a White House affiliated Twitter account. I can't think of the. Yeah, it's one of the accounts. It's not White House, but it's one of the accounts that the Trump administration runs.
- [149:48]
Garrison Davis
One of the accounts the administration uses to disseminate information.
- [149:51]
James Stout
Yeah. This quotation here from Marco Rubio, quote, the President made very wise decision. We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces. And we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties. It seems like the initial push came from Israel.
- [150:11]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [150:11]
James Stout
I'd also like to add that Tehran 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.
- [150:24]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [150:24]
James Stout
For obvious reasons, we, we made another Iran based episode. But Iran is critically low on water. Right. Lake Urmia, which is. Was the largest lake in Asia, is essentially gone now from damming, from draining of aquifers. And Tehran is sitting on top of an empty aquifer, which leads to a greater potential for damage, I guess, with, with some of these large bombs that we, that we're seeing drop there. Right.
- [150:50]
Robert Evans
I mean, it also means that absent even any of this military aggression from the US that we're seeing right now, Iran was in realistic danger of becoming a failed state.
- [151:01]
James Stout
Yes.
- [151:01]
Robert Evans
Because of the sheer lack of water. That is an existential threat when your capital city is running out of water. Like there's no other way to look at that scale of problem. And the fact that now they're dealing with this massacre of the people who had been running things, as well as mass destruction via the air of a lot of civil infrastructure, this is just so much more of a problem. And it, yeah. 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 Syrian civil war much likelier.
- [151:38]
James Stout
Yeah. Especially when you consider that there are millions of refugees already living in Iran. Right. From Afghanistan. Iran has been deporting them on a massive level. But like, yes, the chances of this being an absolute humanitarian disaster are worryingly high. Tehran received one millimeter of rain.
- [151:55]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [151:56]
James Stout
Last year, according to some Guardian reporting I read, they were already, as you said, very close to people turning on the taps and nothing coming out.
- [152:03]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [152:03]
James Stout
This is not helping that. I want to move on to these claims that we have seen in the past 24 hours about a Kurdish partner force in eastern Kurdistan. Right. In Kurdish, that will be called Rojalat. That would be western Iran. Right?
- [152:20]
Robert Evans
Right. Like Kurdistan, the broader region is western Iran, northern Iraq, northeast Syria, southern Turkey. Right. You can draw kind of a big glob around all those parts of the world. That's Kurdistan.
- [152:32]
James Stout
Yeah, exactly. If you can like draw a blob that encompasses all of those things. Yeah. Obviously Kurdistan is not a state. It is an area.
- [152:39]
Robert Evans
It's not at all.
- [152:40]
James Stout
That is part of the issue at stake Here. Kind of a big deal. Kind of the thing. Yeah. So Axios has reported that Trump called Baful Talabani and Masoud Barzani, who are the leaders of the two biggest factions in Iraqi Kurdistan, southern Kurdistan, northern Iraq. The piece was written by Barack Ravid. This is not Barack's first time Joining us on Executive Disorder.
- [153:05]
Robert Evans
Friend of the Bard.
- [153:06]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Regular guest, Barack Rafeed. People remember last time that we talked about Barack, 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 insert that link in case people want to go back. Right. I've spent a lot of time pointing out on various websites how bad this piece was. It was atrocious in its understanding of Kurdish movements. For instance, it listed Talabani and Barzani as leaders of Iranian Kurdish factions.
- [153:44]
Gordain (Gordian)
What?
- [153:44]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [153:48]
Mia Wong
Oh, no.
- [153:49]
James Stout
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.
- [154:00]
Robert Evans
Vastly.
- [154:01]
James Stout
Like, that's not an exaggeration.
- [154:03]
Gordain (Gordian)
Yeah.
- [154:03]
Mia Wong
Like, this is like saying Macron is the leader of, like, the Quebec separatists. Yeah, it's like that kind of shit.
- [154:11]
Robert Evans
See, that I do believe, actually. But that's a separate episode. I will be actually doing that in a partnership with Infowars France. Very excited to see that. Get off the ground.
- [154:22]
James Stout
Infowars France. It's a frightening concept, genuinely.
- [154:27]
Robert Evans
Hey, baby, they're turning the frogs gay. We got to do something about that. That was a French.
- [154:33]
James Stout
French joke. Yeah, French joke.
- [154:35]
Robert Evans
Very good one.
- [154:35]
James Stout
Excellent.
- [154:36]
Robert Evans
Sorry.
- [154:37]
James Stout
They also kind of didn't understand that SDF and Peshmerga were distinct entities. It appears.
- [154:41]
Mia Wong
Jesus Christ.
- [154:42]
Robert Evans
Wildly different entities in combat efficacy, too. Yes.
- [154:47]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah. Just like, unless they're talking about the Peshmerga raj, I guess, which, like, exists largely in Telegram rumors these days. The piece does line up with the strategy that we are seeing, though.
- [154:59]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [154:59]
James Stout
There has been significant bombing of IRGC and police facilities along the border with Iraq. There have been and continue to be many eastern Kurdish groups who are based in Iraq right now.
- [155:16]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [155:17]
James Stout
There has been significant bombing along the road from Halab to Comancha. 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 puk. So they are the two Major Kurdish factions in Iraq have unified their peshmerga. Peshmerga means those who face death. They're 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 the PUK are in control anyway. But they have unified payroll, which is interesting. It is also worth noting that pro Iran groups inside Iraq have been targeting peshmerga with drone attacks. Both sides in this conflict are bombing Iraq right now, which really does suck for people in Iraq.
- [156:07]
Robert Evans
Yeah, I mean, this conflict has been ever present. Obviously after the Iraq War, Iran exerted a significant amount of influence. They brought explosively formed penetrators to the Shia militias in the region. Shia cleric Muqtad Al Sadr, who was probably the most successful political figure of the war years and was very heavily involved in with Iran. During the fighting in Mosul, you had Peshmerga, you had Iraqi army soldiers generally from around Baghdad. And then you had the PMFs, the Popular Mobilization Forces. And these were all Iran backed militias and traveling, especially as I was with Kurds, you had to 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.
- [156:54]
James Stout
Yeah, that was a wild time. He had a lot of people who had a lot of beef on the same side of that particular contract. It's also probably worth noting at this point that like it was the Department of Defense, not the CIA, that was really driving the boat when it came to like supporting the Kurds in Syria. Yeah, the CIA went with the tfsa, right. The Turkish Free Syrian army, which does not have a great record as far as not doing war crimes goes. I also received confirmation today that Barzani and Talabani spoke with Iran's Foreign minister. So they've spoken with both Trump and the Iranian Foreign Minister, Kubad Talabani, who's the Deputy Prime Minister of Kurdistan, not the same person as Baful Talibani. 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 Peshmerga groups from northern Iraq, southern Kurdistan entering Iran in the near future. Yeah, I do think it's interesting that Ravid got this piece leaked to him because things don't generally get leaked because one person has a crisis of conscience. That 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.
- [158:17]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [158:17]
James Stout
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 choose to fight. Right. Or they might fight, but not through their own choosing. There has been, for some time, an alliance of. For some time, I think 22nd of February is when it was made of five Kurdish groups, five Iranian Kurdish groups. These are. Rather than saying them like, phonetically, I'll just read out the initials if people want to look them up. Pjak, P. A kdpi. And then these two groups have names, not initials. There are two of the three parts of Kamala and Chabat. It is more likely that these groups, specifically kdpi, will be willing to engage. We do know that Trump spoke to Mustafa Hijri, 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 data sourcing on that. Yeah. What they plan to do is a little unclear. Right. None of these Roger Lati groups are massive, like, numerically, they don't have the manpower. However, ITV reported that weapons have been stockpiled in eastern Kurdistan for a while. And as we saw in Rojava, as we saw in southern Kurdistan, the Islamic State times, their ability to scale up their forces pretty rapidly is something that the Kurds have retained for a long time.
- [159:59]
Mia Wong
Yeah.
- [159:59]
Robert Evans
An advantage they have over. So, obviously it is true that in the months preceding this, there were uprisings in Iran and tens of thousands were killed by the government. And that represents the people who, in normal Iranian civil society would have been kind of best positioned to be active and a part of any sort of, like, government that were to follow. If the current government collapses under the onslaught being directed against it, a lot 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, more or less is outside of Iran, not physically present. And this is what happened in Syria, too, when you had other parts of the country massively depleted by the slaughter fighting Assad in northeast Syria, you were able to have Kurds from southern Turkey and from northern Iraq come in and provide a lot of the backbone of what became these large and effective fighting units that were able to defeat isis. When you're talking about, like, well, what's going to happen if the government of Iran starts to crumble? There's a pretty good odds that you wind up with a sizable 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. That's a very possible outcome.
- [161:13]
James Stout
Yeah, I think it's. It's probably, if we do see, like, continued airstrikes, for the Iranian state to disappear in its current form, there needs to be a ground element, right? Yes. And these are among the most likely people. It is, of course, important to include the context that the US Is less than a month off abandoning its Kurdish allies in Syria. Right. Yeah.
- [161:36]
Robert Evans
And you should never. If you're. If you're listening to this and a member of, like, a foreign militant group that the US Is talking to, don't ever trust us. Yeah. Bad friends.
- [161:48]
James Stout
Yeah. Yeah. Bad friends, indeed. Yep.
- [161:50]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [161:51]
James Stout
Not friends at all, but allies.
- [161:52]
Robert Evans
Not friends at all. Guys, that will fuck you the second we can. Like, the second we can. Yeah.
- [161:59]
James Stout
I will say that the Americans in Syria were specifically there to fight isis. They weren't there to aid in the Kurdish freedom struggle.
- [162:07]
Robert Evans
Right, right.
- [162:08]
James Stout
And they have been very consistent about not aiding.
- [162:11]
Robert Evans
The other thing about Rojava was it was very explicitly not a state and not an attempt to carve out a separate state, and they were always extremely emphatic about that. So it's a very different situation than anything you're seeing with the regime change the Trump administration is working on.
- [162:28]
James Stout
Yeah. Yeah. Let's take a break here, and then we're going to talk about boats. Huzzah. All right, we are back. And it's boat time.
- [162:49]
Robert Evans
It boat time.
- [162:51]
James Stout
James Stout, Ph.D. yeah, you can't see, but I'm wearing my little boat hat right now. I've got one of those stripey shirts on.
- [162:59]
Mia Wong
So.
- [162:59]
James Stout
The United States has sunk a submarine and a total of 17 Iranian ships, it's claiming. In a briefing, CENTCOM said they were going after the entire Iranian navy. At the current time, they claim there are no Iranian ships in the Strait of Hormuz, the Arabian Gulf, or the Gulf of Oman. 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 republic in recent months
- [163:28]
Garrison Davis
and years, even among conservatives at this point.
- [163:32]
James Stout
Yeah, Trump has made a thing of. Well, I mean Trump wasn't strongly opposed to the war in Iraq. Right. But I think he has acknowledged that it was a mistake or the way it was conducted was poor, at least. What they said here was that the scale of this bombing campaign was twice that of the shock and awe bombing campaign that we saw in Iraq. They have so far used Cruise missiles, airstrikes, B2, B1 and B52 bombers, long range precision strike missiles for the first time. They call them Prisms and something called Lucas drones, 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, sounds like a lawnmower, very distinctive sound. Like I've heard them flying over and. Yeah, but they're a one way attack 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 seeing that the US is openly just saying, yeah, we saw that and we copied it.
- [164:34]
Robert Evans
It's one of the best ideas in warfare of the last 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 Iran 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 interdict with traditional air power.
- [165:04]
James Stout
Right.
- [165:04]
Robert Evans
Yeah, that's a real sea change. And they seem to be being used effectively right now.
- [165:09]
James Stout
Yeah, they're cheap. There's tons of them. Ukraine, they've used interceptor drones to intercept them. Right. But that requires a lot of time, technology and human effort.
- [165:19]
Robert Evans
Yeah. So I think this is probably a good time, James, for me to talk about munitions because as you noted, we're using a significant amount of high precision projectiles. We're using like advanced weapon systems that are made to allow us to hit targets very precisely that could not be hit with dumb munitions 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, we saw this with Russia and Ukraine, we're still seeing it in Russia and Ukraine. And we saw it in World War I too, 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, 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 been reports as soon as this started that that is in fact exactly what's fucking happening. There's a, a good piece on CNN Politics written by Sean Lyngass, Kylie Atwood and Isabel Kershudian, and it describes the, 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 intercept represents hundreds of hours of training, readiness and technology all coming together to work as designed. So that means you, you don't have an infinite number of these, these. Whereas Iran is capable of producing a significant number of the ballistic missiles and the drones that, that these precision munitions are needed to shoot down. Iran's producing something like a 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 Munitions 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 IRGC claims they took out two thaad batteries. And I don't take the IRGC 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 that both were damaged. How damaged they are is very hard to say. We're talking generally the radar array that, 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, that fad 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, that CNN piece here they're interviewing Colonel Mark Gunsinger, 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 weapon systems. Now instead of using our like super advanced precision guided munitions, we can use stuff like JDAMs, which we have a lot more of. We have a huge stockpile of JDAMs 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.
- [170:07]
James Stout
Yeah, Talking of, I guess the next stages of this conflict, the military Religious Freedom foundation is reporting that it's been flooded with complaints from troops whose officers believe the operation will bring about the end of days as foretold in the Bible.
- [170:23]
Robert Evans
Well, there you go.
- [170:23]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah. Here's a quotation from one of their non commissioned officer clients. Quote, this morning our commander opened up the combat readiness status briefing by urging us not to be afraid as to what is happening with our combat operations in Iran right now. He urged us to tell our troops this was all part of God's divine plan. And he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of 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 Garrison Dave is a regular resident Bible person. Please comment if you want to. I don't think this is good. It's my take on that. I think it's a great way to be going around foreign policy.
- [171:17]
Garrison Davis
No, it's not a good foreign policy blueprint.
- [171:20]
Robert Evans
It might be kind of made biblically accurate, though. I mean, that's the thing.
- [171:25]
Garrison Davis
Is that not a good blueprint? It is accurate, though.
- [171:28]
Robert Evans
I was like, Trump does in fact match a number of descriptions of the Antichrist. And it is possible that what we're doing in Iran ends in the apocalypse.
- [171:38]
James Stout
So, you know, my understanding is this hinges on a certain color of cat, the red heifer.
- [171:45]
Mia Wong
This is the whole thing.
- [171:46]
Robert Evans
We had a breeding program in Texas.
- [171:48]
James Stout
It's good heifer. Yes, yes. This is, this is one of the first, the first like American, like subculture things I ever engaged when, like when I got the Internet at school and you could go into the computer lab and look at stuff I learned about these people trying to make a red heifer. Right. Like, yeah, that will bring about the apocalypse. This cow. Yeah. Fascinating stuff. Very normal.
- [172:07]
Robert Evans
Very normal.
- [172:09]
James Stout
That's all I've got. Hopefully send us pictures of your cattle if you've got one of the appropriate color and that'll be a sign that it's all over.
- [172:16]
Garrison Davis
I mean, things in Iran do not seem to be winding down. If anything, they are holding or ramping up.
- [172:22]
Gordain (Gordian)
Yeah.
- [172:23]
Garrison Davis
On Tuesday, Mark Rubio said, quote, in the next few hours and days, you're going to really begin to perceive a change in the scope and the intensity of these attacks as frankly the two most powerful air forces in the world take apart this terroristic regime and defang it, unquote.
- [172:41]
Mia Wong
That by the way, was also preceded immediately by him saying, we're going to unleash Chang, which is a completely unhinged thing from the old, old like anti communist far right where they were like, we're going to unleash Chiang Kai Shek and he's going to retake China and kill everyone. So that's, that's great. That's. That's fun. Extremely normal.
- [173:00]
Robert Evans
Yeah, that's a, that's a John Bircher right there.
- [173:03]
James Stout
Yeah. Yeah. Wow.
- [173:05]
Garrison Davis
And after a closed door Senate hearing briefing the Senate on actions in Iran, Sen. Blumenthal said, quote, I am more fearful than ever after this briefing that we may be putting boots on the ground.
- [173:19]
Robert Evans
Yeah. We have to. You can't actually stop the regime without doing that.
- [173:23]
James Stout
Yeah. Even the like Trump model, which is the Syria model. Right. Of A relatively limited footprint with a partner force. It still, like American people died in Syria. Well.
- [173:35]
Robert Evans
And unfortunately, I think they're also looking to Libya. Right. Initially, we're hoping it would be something like that. But the thing is, in Libya, you already had a situation where there was a massive army arrayed against the dictator who was holding them back via air power. So being able to stop the air power was enough to sign the regime's death warrant. And obviously the failure of NATO to do anything to help Libya in the wake of that has been awful. But it's totally different in Iran. Like, it's the Iranian people, the Iranian 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.
- [174:32]
James Stout
Yeah, it's going to be the next few days, probably by the time you're hearing this. By the way, just as we're recording this, hopefully this has left the news cycle. Several news outlets have published that Kurdish paramilitary forces are streaming across the border into Iraq. That's not true. Each of those groups who they're claiming are doing that have denied it. There is going to be a lot of misinformation in the next few weeks and you should be very careful about where you are sourcing your news. Yeah, I just wanted to make that very clear.
- [175:06]
Robert Evans
Yeah. This is the first war, potentially major war, that started while already in place was an entire system that monetized people getting disinformation about that war to go viral. Right.
- [175:20]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [175:20]
Robert Evans
Obviously that has impacted things in Ukraine later and Palestine. And Palestine too.
- [175:25]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [175:25]
Gordain (Gordian)
Yeah.
- [175:25]
Robert Evans
But when the invasion started, those were not like it really. It came into being over what happened in Palestine. You're right, Garrison.
- [175:32]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [175:33]
Robert Evans
But it's now in completely full form at the start of the conflict. Yeah, yeah.
- [175:38]
Garrison Davis
There's a whole like industry, you know, across many different countries.
- [175:42]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [175:42]
Garrison Davis
To so misinformation to win money via the blue check system on Twitter, which is still used for, you know, news sourcing across the world in the. A case of breaking events.
- [175:53]
Mia Wong
So speaking of industry. So one of the other consequences of this war has been effectively the end of trade and passage to the Strait of Hormuz, which is extremely critical lifeline for the world economy. I'm going to quote here from Al Jazeera a commander in Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, said on Monday that the strait was, quote, closed and that any vessel attempting to pass through the waterway would be set, quote, ablaze. Now, per CNBC, there's about 13 million barrels of oil a day that flows through the Strait of Hormuz. It's 31% of all seaborne crude flow. 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 doesn't about, you know, obliterating Iranian 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 the strait is not open. The IRGC has repeatedly said that it is closed. Trump also, yesterday that we're recording this on Wednesday, said that the U.S. will escort tankers, if necessary through the strait with U.S. navy ships. The other major issue here is that no insurance company will insure any ship going through this, because why on earth would you do that? That and Trump has also ordered the government to insure 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 Strait of Hormuz. Where people have figured this out are the Asian markets, particularly South Korea and Thailand, where both of their stock indexes had their circuit breakers triggered, which is the emergency system they have in place. When the market is collapsing too fast, all trading halts. South Korea's index lost 12.06% 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 were down between 3 and 4%, 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 significant 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 is able to reopen the strait, which I don't think is particularly likely. So this is probably just going to intensify.
- [179:49]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, you could call it a dire strait.
- [179:53]
Robert Evans
Ah, Garrison, you've brought up my favorite band of which I am aware of one of their songs. Great band. Heard the one song of theirs.
- [180:02]
James Stout
I know one of the songs that has a slur in it. There are better songs.
- [180:06]
Robert Evans
Hey, no. But they stopped using the slur in more recent updates. But also the slur was never, it was never a slur directed at the audience. They were talking from the perspective of a bigot insulting them.
- [180:19]
James Stout
Yeah, it's the thing that happened.
- [180:21]
Robert Evans
So it's. I think, anyway.
- [180:23]
James Stout
Yeah. In terms of songs with slurs, not the worst.
- [180:26]
Mia Wong
Speaking of dire straits, I'm cutting the white people off talking about slurs here. Cutting it off. Speak. Speaking of being in dire straits. Spain in a well, when I wrote this script, I said a rare moment of bravery. I should give them slightly more credit than that. But in a moment of genuine bravery and principle, the Spanish government has refused to allow the US to use its air bases to conduct the war in Iran. Yeah, these are American air bases in Spain. This has led to a bunch of assets being moved out of Spain. Trump has responded to this by. I'm just going to quote Al Jazeera. Quote from Al Jazeera. He said he had told his. He had told his Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Best 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.
- [181:19]
Robert Evans
The president said the Trump is taking away your Yamona Barrico. Like you have to. We have to stop this.
- [181:27]
Mia Wong
There will be no top us in America.
- [181:28]
Robert Evans
Where else are we going to get the highest, best quality smoked meats yeah.
- [181:33]
James Stout
Your chorizo will forever be worse. It's not really possible to do this. Right. Because Spain is in the eu.
- [181:39]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [181:40]
James Stout
We don't have internal borders.
- [181:41]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [181:42]
Mia Wong
It should it be possible to do this? I who knows. I think it's like probably I'm leaning towards about 95. 5 that Trump just forgets about this. And there's a 5% chance there's some completely hitherto unused, unhinged national security like power that was passed by John Woo specifically. But I don't know. We're back to Calvin Ball trade policy. He's just saying stuff I was wrong last week. They're just making shit up.
- [182:06]
Robert Evans
Well, here's the thing like that this shows this maybe optimistic is how different the climate is. Like the social climate is in the United States as opposed during the Iraq war where like if this has happened during the Iraq war, you would have had people like renaming Spanish dishes Freedom
- [182:24]
James Stout
paella or whatever the freedom fries. Yeah.
- [182:26]
Robert Evans
You would have had. There would have been like a. So there's not, there's been no cultural backlash against Spain in the United States that I, that I've seen that has any kind of juice and you know,
- [182:34]
Mia Wong
and to say like one serious thing before we wrap this up, like the approval rating for this war is sub 50% right now.
- [182:41]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [182:42]
Mia Wong
It's only going to get worse because wars were approval ratings are always the highest when they first start. It's already sub 50. Everyone hates this. I want to wrap this up before we go to ads by saying the administration had also claimed that Spain had because of the threat of economic pressure, whatever, had agreed to cooperate and the Spanish government immediately said no, we didn't. What are you talking about?
- [183:05]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [183:05]
Mia Wong
So they're just lying about stuff again. It's great.
- [183:08]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [183:08]
James Stout
Woo. Ooh, Fantastic.
- [183:11]
Garrison Davis
You know what else is great?
- [183:12]
James Stout
What's that?
- [183:13]
Garrison Davis
Gary America Again, this brief ad break before we return for even more news
- [183:20]
Vicky Osterweil
foreign.
- [183:31]
Garrison Davis
We are back, two final stories to cover this episode. Last week, the Kansas state legislature passed a new law overriding Governor Laura Kelly's veto, invalidating state issued driver's license with updated gender markers requiring quote, kansas issued driver's license and identification cards reflect the credential holders sex 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 trans person who did not change their gender marker but recently changed her legal name. State Officials say about 1,700 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 birth certificates and driver's license in the future. This same law also prohibits trans people from using the public restrooms on government property that aligns 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 $1,000. Two trans Kansans and the ACLU have filed a lawsuit claiming the new law, SB 244, violates the Kansas Constitution's protections for personal autonomy, privacy, equality under the law, due process, and freedom of speech.
- [185:00]
Robert Evans
Yep.
- [185:01]
James Stout
Not great.
- [185:02]
Robert Evans
No. It obviously is a violation of all those things.
- [185:05]
Mia Wong
Yeah. I mean, I think it's also just worth noting that, that this is part of a trend we've been seeing of just this is basically what used to be a whole bunch of different bills compiled into one. Right. This is like a bounty bill. This is like a ban. This is instead of having legislative fights over all the different elements, they're just pushing them all through in one package, which has been working for them.
- [185:27]
Garrison Davis
Very clear, egregious violation of rights. And now you have people in a situation where they could have have their passport being invalid, their birth certificate being invalid, and their state driver's license being invalid.
- [185:40]
Mia Wong
Yep.
- [185:40]
Garrison Davis
It's a very precarious situation.
- [185:43]
Gordain (Gordian)
Yeah.
- [185:43]
Garrison Davis
That we will watch to see the fallout of in the next few weeks to months. Finally, the Texas primary election that happened on Tuesday. Some big news coming out of that. The Republican Senate primary was going to advance to a runoff election between incumbent John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton. Though this runoff could be disrupted because Trump just signaled that he will endorse Cornyn, leading many to suspect that Paxton may drop out of 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 in a close race that will now also go to a runoff. The same goes for Representative Julie Johnson and former Representative Colin Allred, 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 runoff. Incumbent Dan Crenshaw lost the primary.
- [186:53]
James Stout
Yeah.
- [186:54]
Garrison Davis
To Republican challenger Steve Todd Booth, who was backed by the party's far right. And Tucker Carlson is significantly to the right of Dan Crenshaw.
- [187:03]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [187:04]
Garrison Davis
As fun as it is to see Crenshaw go down. He's getting replaced by someone that is actually worse.
- [187:09]
Robert Evans
It's not good. It's just kind of funny.
- [187:12]
Mia Wong
Yeah, we've replaced Hitler with Hitler, too.
- [187:15]
James Stout
Great things happening because he specifically had spoken out about some Trump policies. Right.
- [187:20]
Garrison Davis
Like, yeah, he had gone more independent on some issues rather than like ketoing
- [187:25]
James Stout
to the bending the knee to the
- [187:27]
Garrison Davis
the current Republican line. And that opened him up to attacks from the right.
- [187:31]
Robert Evans
Yep.
- [187:32]
Garrison Davis
But the big story of the night is the Democratic Senate primary, in which Texas State House Rep. James Talarico is projected to be to U.S. representative for Texas Jasmine Crockett, who previously told Talarico that she would not run for the Senate before entering the race late 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 countywide 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 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 Talarico advocated to expand voting hours in these counties to compensate for the confusion and ensure all votes intended to be cast on Election Day would be counted. Judges in Dallas and Williamson county extended voting hours to 9 and 10pm respectively. But later that night, in a ruling just before 8:30pm 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 7pm and mark them as provisional ballots. After a request by Attorney 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 the 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, unquote. 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.
- [189:52]
James Stout
It does feel a lot like the first decade of the century. Again, like, we got wars in the Middle East. We got people arguing about votes that should be counted and not counted. It's great.
- [190:03]
Garrison Davis
So the total number of votes cast in the Republican primary that are tallied so far at 95% of the votes in is 2,142,211 versus the Democratic primary. That's 2,308,836 slightly more Democratic votes counted in the primary.
- [190:27]
James Stout
Texas has open primaries, apparently.
- [190:30]
Garrison Davis
Texas has open primaries, yeah. Okay. Talarico was up 9 points among white voters, up 22 points among Hispanic, while Crockett was up 23 points among black voters. Crocker was up 8 points with Biden voters, and Talarico up 32 points with Sanders voters. If you look at the 2020 presidential primary, that gives you a little bit of a peek into kind of what these two candidates represented, with Crockett serving on the Kamala Harris campaign, definitely more of a K Hive esque candidate, and Talarico a little bit running off of the kind of Bernie Sanders progressive coattails a little bit not coattails, but like, using that sort of playbook as more of like a relatable working class guy, less of like an establishment Democrat, like. Like Crockett sort of branded herself as. Talarico is a former school teacher who served in the State House since 2018, has fought against Christian nationalism and a bill mandating the Ten Commandments be displayed in classrooms, calling the bill unconstitutional, unamerican, and deeply unchristian, and has passed 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 verses, 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, targeting the richest 1% in giant corporations, making billionaires and corporations, quote, unquote, pay their fair share of taxes, raising federal minimum wage to $15, expanding child and earned income tax credits. He's opposed to state legislation restricting gender affirming health care, including for people under 18. In September, right after he announced his candidacy, Talarico, who's a member of the LGBTQ Caucus, responded to a question about trans athletes like this.
- [192:29]
James Stout
I think it's interesting. I've been in this race for five days, and I've had a lot of interviews with national media no one's ever asked me about the cost of housing. No one's asked me about the cost of prescription drugs.
- [192:40]
Mia Wong
No one's asked me about the cost of child care. The only thing the media wants to
- [192:44]
James Stout
ask me about are trans athletes.
- [192:47]
Mia Wong
And so what I would say say is that the only minority destroying this country is the billionaires. Trans People are 1% of the population. Undocumented people are 1% of the population. Muslims are 1% of the population. We are all focused on the wrong 1%. Trans people aren't taking away our health care.
- [193:06]
James Stout
Undocumented people aren't defunding our schools. Muslims aren't cutting taxes for themselves and their rich friends.
- [193:13]
Mia Wong
It's the bill of billionaires and their puppet politicians. And so we need not only the media, but all of us to focus
- [193:19]
James Stout
on the real problem at hand.
- [193:22]
Robert Evans
Hey.
- [193:23]
Garrison Davis
It appeared like this was effective messaging.
- [193:26]
Robert Evans
That's a good response.
- [193:27]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah. The only dangerous minority is the rich. It has consistently actually been a popular messaging that Democrats have nonetheless shied away from.
- [193:37]
Robert Evans
Yeah. Because that's who donates money to them.
- [193:39]
Donna Al Kurd
Yeah.
- [193:39]
Mia Wong
Because they like the rich.
- [193:41]
Garrison Davis
This is the only.
- [193:41]
Mia Wong
The only minority they like because many
- [193:44]
James Stout
of them are rich. Yeah. And others wish to be.
- [193:47]
Garrison Davis
Talo supports regulating AI universal health care, term limits for Congress and Supreme Court justices, halting Israel's illegal settlements, restoring the talking only filibuster, and banning gerrymandering and establishing independent redistricting. Tyler participated in the Texas Democrats protests against redistricting both in, like, 2021 and last year in 2025. Where they fled Texas.
- [194:14]
James Stout
Yeah. They went on holiday for a while.
- [194:15]
Garrison Davis
On his campaign website, he talks about advocating reform to make legal immigration easier and creating pathways to legalization for undocumented immigrants already long present, as well as spouses and dreamers. Part of his immigration policy reads, quote, prioritize the deportation of criminals, gang members, and human traffickers, not our neighbors, who contribute to our communities, pay taxes, and pose no threat 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.
- [194:52]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [194:52]
Garrison Davis
When. With people sent to see cot, that also includes regular people. That also includes our neighbors. And I think that is. 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. A lot of his immigration stuff definitely is not going to at least Currently is not as far to the left 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. Talariko has advocated to stop the sale of quote unquote offensive weapons to Israel while still funding the Iron Dome and defense 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 regarding that, that the general is not until November and if it is Cornyn, that will be a much, a much harder race considering he's an incumbent versus, you know, Paxton, who has a lot of, lot of avenues for attack for someone like Talarico who can lean on his like Christian charm to 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.
- [196:28]
Mia Wong
Yeah, yeah, there were a bunch of primary elections in North Carolina and I'm mentioning this because there was a series of North Carolina Democrats who voted with Republicans to pass anti trans legislation over a veto from the governor and also voted with them on really horrifying like pro ice legislation. And those people lost by cartoon margins. We are talking margins that start at 30% go to 40% and one of these people lost their race by 50%.
- [196:58]
James Stout
Geez.
- [196:58]
Mia Wong
So the anti trans candidates and the like, I am pro ice racist candidates lost by like bath party numbers, which, which I think is actually very encouraging because I think it's, it's, it's a sign of where people are right now, where people are going. Even as the state is trying to do anti trans repression. This has become a thing that is enough where if you are willing to like vote for this shit and make a bunch of trans people suffer, you, you will, you will lose by, you will lose by 40 in a primary. Unbelievable.
- [197:33]
James Stout
Primaries tend to include more informed, politically engaged voters and that is one of the things that engages people most right now, specifically the ICE stuff.
- [197:44]
Robert Evans
It's also more ideologically motivated voters and the right has made, the far right has made use of this for decades. Push the more moderate actual politician stuff of the Republican Party further right because you can't win primaries without getting like, appealing to the most extreme of them. And there has not, up until very recently been that 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.
- [198:15]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah, yeah, apparently.
- [198:17]
Robert Evans
And I think that this is good. I think it's, it's a smart way to influence the direction of the party.
- [198:22]
James Stout
Yeah, yeah.
- [198:24]
Mia Wong
I want to close with. There's a slogan from Chile that gets used in social movements constantly that goes roughly like, chile is where neoliberalism was born and 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 and mobilization that can kill this kind of anti trans politics in the place where it was born. The first bathroom Bill.
- [198:53]
James Stout
So if you would like to email us with some tips on stories, you can do so at coolzonetipsoton. Me. That is not the email address to plug your book or ask if you could be on behind the Bastards. And if you do that, I will block you.
- [199:10]
Mia Wong
Put a trans girl on your couch.
- [199:12]
Garrison Davis
We reported the news.
- [199:14]
Gordain (Gordian)
We reported the news.
- [199:21]
Robert Evans
Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.
- [199:27]
Donna Al Kurd
It Could Happen. Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts you can now find sources for. It could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
- [199:47]
Danielle Kantor
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [199:50]
Donna Al Kurd
Guaranteed Human.