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Joe Rogan Experience #1316 - Abby Martin

Abby Martin is a journalist and host of the “The Empire Files” — http://theempirefiles.tv The Empire Files documentary "Gaza Fight For Freedom" will be available soon. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG29FnXZm4F5U8xpqs1cs1Q

Joe RoganhostAbby Martinguest
Jun 26, 20192h 16mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:002:14

    Oliver Stone, radical Hollywood, and the JFK movie’s “made-up” character

    1. JR

      Three, two, one, boom. Hello, Abby.

    2. AM

      Hello, Joe.

    3. JR

      What's going on?

    4. AM

      Nothing much.

    5. JR

      I saw you chilling with Oliver Stone the other day. Ooh.

    6. AM

      Yeah.

    7. JR

      What was that like? (laughs)

    8. AM

      (laughs) It was pretty cool.

    9. JR

      He's a interesting guy.

    10. AM

      Very interesting guy, yeah. He likes to support radical politics, so he came out for the screening of, uh, the new film that we did.

    11. JR

      (sighs) Yeah, he's a very unusual character in that regard, right? 'Cause he's like this blockbuster movie maker guy, but he's also a pretty radical guy in the way... in his politics and what he supports, and-

    12. AM

      Yeah, he was kind of like the black sheep of Hollywood for a while, you know, doing all the radical, kind of the radical outlier of Hollywood basically.

    13. JR

      Yeah, but th- d- you saw the JFK movie, right?

    14. AM

      Yeah, of course.

    15. JR

      What... That was a weird one, right? It's like, I kind of like it, but I'm kind of like, "Hey, man, that fucking general wasn't even a real person." Like, you m- you made up a real person. Like, you put him in there.

    16. AM

      Yeah.

    17. JR

      Like, that guy didn't exist. Like, the- the Donald Sutherland guy.

    18. AM

      A lot of the movie's really good. Yeah.

    19. JR

      Very good. Yeah.

    20. AM

      Very, very good.

    21. JR

      But I get it, that he kind of needed to move it along for a 90-minute or two-hour movie, whatever it was.

    22. AM

      Mm-hmm.

    23. JR

      I get it. He kind of needed, like, this little character to, like, be d- dishing out the inside scoop, the Donald Sutherland character.

    24. AM

      Yeah.

    25. JR

      But in real life, there was no guy.

    26. AM

      I didn't know that.

    27. JR

      Yeah. Goddamn it, Oliver.

    28. AM

      (laughs)

    29. JR

      If you knew, would you-

    30. AM

      Tricked again.

  2. 2:144:40

    Assassinations, CIA power, and skepticism of official narratives (JFK to MLK)

    1. JR

      Very good movie. I don't know. What do you think happened in the Oliver Stone st-

    2. AM

      (laughs)

    3. JR

      What do you think happened?

    4. AM

      Right off the bat, let's, let's talk about it.

    5. JR

      Why not? Fuck it.

    6. AM

      Okay. Uh, I don't know. I mean, I think that-

    7. JR

      But if you had to guess, if I gave you 100 bucks, you said, "All right, Abby, coe- uh, put- bet on red or bet on black," do you think Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone or do you think that there was some sort of conspiracy involving various nefarious groups?

    8. AM

      I think Oliver Stone's movie is closer to the truth than obviously what the official narrative is. I think that if you look at all those high-pro- profile assassinations in that era, I think a lot of them are highly questionable.

    9. JR

      Yeah.

    10. AM

      I mean, it, it doesn't just stop with JFK. We're talking about RFK, I, I don't-

    11. JR

      Sure.

    12. AM

      ... believe that story at all. Um, Martin Luther King, you know? I mean, all of these people-

    13. JR

      Yeah, for sure.

    14. AM

      There's really, really sketchy things about all of them, and if we were conducting, the CIA was conducting basically an assassination program around the world-

    15. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    16. AM

      ... to expedite US foreign policy and imperialism, why would we not have been doing that here at home?

    17. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    18. AM

      You know? I mean, we know that Fred Hampton was killed, outright, the, the leader of the Black Panther Party, so all of these things are kind of... make more sense when you look back at history and see how kind of out of control the CIA was at that time.

    19. JR

      Yeah. I mean, it only makes sense that they would wanna get rid of certain characters that were causing trouble.

    20. AM

      Right.

    21. JR

      You know, I had Mike Baker on, uh, from... who used to work... He was a CIA operative, and he looked into the JFK, or excuse me, the, uh, Martin Luther King assassination, and he said that one, more than any other one that he looked into, seemed like something was really w- 'cause James Earl Ray was, like, a loser. Just, like this shifty guy, and then before the assassination, all of a sudden, he had money. All of a sudden, he w- like, he was... he w- it looked like he was being steered, and, uh-

    22. AM

      Mm-hmm.

    23. JR

      ... he went into great detail about it. I don't remember all the details, but he was shaking his head about it. He's like, "That one, out of any, uh, one that I looked into, had the fingerprints of manipulation on it."

    24. AM

      Well, you know about his family, obviously, Martin Luther King's family that had that civil trial and basically concluded that the US government had to have been involved for the circumstances to have happened the way they did.

    25. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    26. AM

      And if you look at how Martin Luther King at the time was considered the most dangerous, quote-unquote, "Negro" in the country, that's what the government was saying about him. I mean, he was hated, he was loathed, he was trying to basically implement, like, a poor people's campaign to occupy DC-

    27. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    28. AM

      ... to give poor people economic rights. That was a, that was really, really threatening-

    29. JR

      (laughs)

    30. AM

      ... I think to the establishment at that time.

  3. 4:408:44

    Reparations, institutional racism, and why communities stay trapped

    1. JR

      Also, you know, it's hard for us when we're thinking back about that era. I mean, we weren't really... I mean, I was, I was born in '67. You were born later to that. It wasn't... Y- we don't understand that era. That's 100 years-

    2. AM

      Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

    3. JR

      ... after slavery. Just 100.

    4. AM

      Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

    5. JR

      A person's lifetime.

    6. AM

      A person's lifetime, yeah. (laughs)

    7. JR

      Kind of crazy.

    8. AM

      Right.

    9. JR

      You know, and things still hadn't been resolved, and then when you look at it now, I mean, Juneteenth, they had the, uh, congressional hearings and they're talking about reparations, and you see just the, the, the different polarized sides of how people look at it even today, whether or not reparations should be given or whether or not there should be any, any sort of effort to rectify the obvious... If you look at the, the, the economic strife that's in these Southern cities that are primarily African American-

    10. AM

      Mm-hmm.

    11. JR

      ... that are really from slavery. I mean, this is l- literally the remnants of slavery, and it's never been fixed. It's almost like any other problem that would be in our infrastructure, any other problem that would be in, you know, anything with, you know, p- p- pollution or any- anything else that people clearly did where someone did and fucked it up, there's efforts made to fix it.

    12. AM

      Right.

    13. JR

      And there's discussions about it, but this is so much resistance.

    14. AM

      Right. Ta-Nehisi Coates, I think his name is, he was testifying there.

    15. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    16. AM

      Um, and he was saying that, you know, the argument is we had nothing to do with this because, again, it was more than a person ago. (laughs) Why should we have anything to do with-

    17. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    18. AM

      ... what slavery did? And it's beyond that though, as you're mentioning. I mean, this is an institutionalized racism that we still see the effects of-

    19. JR

      Yeah, for sure.

    20. AM

      ... very starkly within the prison community-

    21. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    22. AM

      ... within... I mean, all these things, and he said, "We were still paying out Civil War soldiers families pensions."

    23. JR

      Yeah.

    24. AM

      ... decades after that. So, like, why, why do that but not actually try to, you know, provide some economic justice to the Black community?

    25. JR

      Yeah, it's a weird conversation, because it's not just a conversation about whether or not something wrong was done, but it's also a racial conversation.

    26. AM

      Mm-hmm.

    27. JR

      Like, I've seen some weird posts. Like, you know Chuck Woolery? The guy who was from-

    28. AM

      Oh, I do know him.

    29. JR

      ... The Love Connection? "We'll be right back in two and two."

    30. AM

      (laughs)

  4. 8:4410:43

    2020 Democrats, identity politics, and skepticism toward “Hillary-lite” candidates

    1. AM

      We don't get to the root. I mean, Tulsi and Bernie are the only candidates worth giving a shit about. I mean, c-

    2. JR

      What about Buttigieg?

    3. AM

      Buttigieg!

    4. JR

      I think-

    5. AM

      Uh, dude.

    6. JR

      That fucking town hall sunk that dude.

    7. AM

      This is, uh, ugh. How many candidates are there now? I feel like two o- two other ones just jumped in the race.

    8. JR

      Who else?

    9. AM

      Now we have, like, twen-... Uh, I don't fucking know their names.

    10. JR

      (laughs)

    11. AM

      Do you know anyone other (laughs) beyond Buttigieg?

    12. JR

      (gibberish)

    13. AM

      Buttigieg? (laughs)

    14. JR

      Uh, I know a Joe Biden.

    15. AM

      Beto O'Rourke?

    16. JR

      Yeah, uh, Beto, Beto's hilarious.

    17. AM

      Jesus Christ.

    18. JR

      Beto's on the way out, though. He's too close to beta. It's too close.

    19. AM

      (laughs) He does, he does look like he would be called that. Uh, but his dad actually-

    20. JR

      He should be.

    21. AM

      ... just openly said in an interview, he's like, "Yeah, I called him Beto 'cause I wanted him to get the Mexican vote 'cause I knew he would eventually run for office."

    22. JR

      What?

    23. AM

      (laughs) Yeah. His real name's, like, Robert.

    24. JR

      Oh!

    25. AM

      Robert O'Rourke.

    26. JR

      Jesus Christ.

    27. AM

      Yeah.

    28. JR

      That sounds like a soldier.

    29. AM

      These people, I mean, these people are like 100 shades of Hillary.

    30. JR

      (laughs) Yeah.

  5. 10:4312:15

    Kamala Harris truancy crackdown and punitive “top cop” governance

    1. JR

      Kamala Harris, um, I've, I've saw this one speech that she was giving where she was talking about forcing children to attend school by holding their parents accountable, where she instituted a policy where if the kids missed school, the parents could be arrested. Do you know about that?

    2. AM

      No.

    3. JR

      It was super disturbing.

    4. AM

      That is insane.

    5. JR

      It was super disturbing. And she was talking about how, how effective it was and that, you know, they had cops show up at the door of the w- the woman's house who was a single mom who had these children and the kids weren't going to school. Like, hey, no. That's-

    6. AM

      She was a cop. I mean-

    7. JR

      Yeah.

    8. AM

      ... she's a top cop.

    9. JR

      Exactly. But that authoritative-

    10. AM

      Yeah.

    11. JR

      ... authoritarian nonsense, like that way of thinking, you know why you do that? 'Cause no one's ever done that to you.

    12. AM

      Right.

    13. JR

      Somebody ever knocked on your fucking door and said, "Hey, we're gonna lock you up in jail because your 16-year-old boy," when you have three kids?

    14. AM

      Right.

    15. JR

      Listen, if you're a single mom, anyone who's a single mom who has a boy knows, when that fucking boy hits puberty, if they run with the wrong crowd, good fucking luck trying to control them.

    16. AM

      Yeah.

    17. JR

      Good luck. It's hard.

    18. AM

      Yeah.

    19. JR

      It's real hard. And if she's got a job or two jobs maybe, 'cause she's trying to put food on the table and keep the fucking lights on, and you're gonna arrest her 'cause her kid doesn't show up at school? Holy shit.

    20. AM

      Can you imagine looking at all the problems in our country and being like, "You know what? We need to arrest parents if their kids are truant."

    21. JR

      Yeah. It's, it's insane. I mean, make sure I'm right about that.

    22. AM

      Who are these people?

    23. JR

      I'm, I'm 99% sure-

    24. NA

      Yeah, I looked it up, an article about ... they're talking about her, like, regret about this policy and-

    25. JR

      (laughs) Yeah, she had 1 of 1.

    26. NA

      ... seems like in 2013.

    27. AM

      Hm, got a little bit of negative feedback.

    28. JR

      Maybe 'cause she's running for fucking president.

    29. AM

      Right.

    30. JR

      You should regret something like that. It's evil.

  6. 12:1516:16

    Beto/‘Robert’ and the military-industrial complex: who should pay for veterans?

    1. AM

      You wanna hear another insane, uh, policy going back to Ro- Robert O'Rourke?

    2. JR

      There it is. The human cost of Kamala Harris' war-

    3. AM

      Oh, my God.

    4. JR

      ... on truancy. The progressive prosecutor wanted to transform how California responded to students missing school.

    5. AM

      Unbelievable.

    6. JR

      Uh ...... parents like, uh, I don't know how to say her name-

    7. AM

      Cherie, yeah.

    8. JR

      ... Cherie, Cherie Peoples wound up paying the price. So sh- this lady-

    9. AM

      Oh, I read that.

    10. JR

      ... probably-

    11. AM

      I remember reading this

    12. JR

      Yeah. So, it w- I'm, I'm correct.

    13. AM

      Yeah, and there was a good reason. J- her kid was sick or something-

    14. JR

      Yeah.

    15. AM

      ... and she-

    16. JR

      Ugh.

    17. AM

      So Beto (laughs) , I don't ... No, let's not call him Beto anymore. His name's Robert.

    18. JR

      Robert, yeah.

    19. AM

      Um, Robert actually has a really great idea, Joe. He wants to tax non-military families to pay for veterans' healthcare.

    20. JR

      What?

    21. AM

      And pay for veterans. Yeah, isn't that nice? So punish the people who don't want to join the military.

    22. JR

      What?

    23. AM

      Very smart.

    24. JR

      (snores)

    25. AM

      Robert 2020-

    26. JR

      How about punish the fucking people who make the weapons-

    27. AM

      Right, right.

    28. JR

      ... who influence the politicians? Fi-

    29. AM

      Let's tax the defense contractors.

    30. JR

      Yeah. Find out what the military industrial complex is really made of. Find out-

  7. 16:1622:59

    War with Iran: sanctions, provocations, and ‘false flag’ dynamics

    1. JR

      Yeah.

    2. AM

      ... it erupts and takes over the whole planet. And that's what would happen if we actually did bomb Iran. I, I think that people don't understand how precarious the situation is that Trump and these cronies have laid out.

    3. JR

      Not just is, but came so close to being a-

    4. AM

      Mm-hmm.

    5. JR

      ... reality just a week ago.

    6. AM

      You mean you don't think we should go to war after, uh, uh, for bombing oil tankers and, um, Saudi oil tankers? You don't think we should go to war over that?

    7. JR

      For shooting down a robot?

    8. AM

      Yeah, right. (laughs)

    9. JR

      They shot our robot. That's it. We're gonna fuck them up.

    10. AM

      I would die for Saudi oil tankers. And I'd be the first one to put my body on the line.

    11. JR

      There was a lot of people that were saying this seems like the Gulf of Tonkin too.

    12. AM

      Yeah. Mm-hmm.

    13. JR

      They were like, "I don't b- I'm not buying this at all."

    14. AM

      Yeah.

    15. JR

      There were so many people that were like, really kinda credible people who were openly saying, "This stinks." Like, "It just seems staged." It's, it seems like some, some bi- ... Like, why would they do that? Why would-

    16. AM

      It's total false flag shit going on over and over and over again. They're just trying so hard because they want to provoke Iran to the point where Iran will be forced to respond.

    17. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    18. AM

      And this is after suffocating, asphyxiating sanctions that have, that are costing peoples' lives. I mean-

    19. JR

      Well, what is it? What ... For the folks at home-

    20. AM

      Yeah.

    21. JR

      ... that aren't p- haven't been paying attention to this, what is it that makes them want to go to war with Iran?

    22. AM

      So w- we have to just look at w- what Iran is. I mean, Iran just won its independence less than 100 years ago in a, you know, an era of and a wave of anti-colonial struggles, and we immediately, the MI6 as well as the CA- CIA, instigated a coup. So we always talk about how we want Iran to have democracy. They had democracy. They had a revolution, a people's revolution that was overthrown. We overthrew Mohammed Mosaddegh and then stayed at a absolute monarchy for decades, and at the time, it had the highest human rights abuses documented in the world. It w- it was pretty unique in that sense. And, you know, you can only imagine why Iran is the way it is today, and there was such a suppression of the left and of the Communist Party in Iran that the Islamic revolutionary, um, revolution happened, and the Ayatollah was the leader of that political movement, and that's why Iran has the political system it has today. But it's about the oil, man. It, it's always about the oil, and it's always about the foreign domination of the region. They hate that Iran, um, is an independent country and doesn't bow down to US imperialism and US capitalism, and Iran also is allies with a lot of states that Israel and the US and Saudi Arabia do not want it to be allies with, you know, Hezbollah-... Hamas, um, and so that's, that's a big problem for the US, and it's getting in the way of a lot of kind of goals in the region. But it's really fascinating when you look at what actually happened, because, you know, the nuclear deal was amazing. It was huge. I mean, w- uh, Trump keeps belaboring the fact that Iran should not have nuclear weapons. They didn't have nuclear weapons, they never did, and they were agreeing to never have them. That was the whole Iran nuclear deal. But, um, Trump just immediately rescinded that, slapped insane sanctions on Iran, and now, you know, sanctions every month, just continuing to constrict their economy, and even basically sanctions on... Threatening sanctions on China and India and other countries that actually do deals with Iran now too, which is totally insane. So once you do that, um, and then you say, w- you know, "You're hitting yourself, you're hitting yourself, why are you doing this?" It's like, no, you're doing this to them. And on top of that, John Bolton keeps saying, you know, there's all these unique threats coming from Iran, we need to surround them with all these warships. And they keep sending thousands of more troops, thousands of more troops. So you're getting to a position now... And now the drone, right? We're flying a drone into Iranian airspace and expecting that they're not gonna shoot that down? Why the fuck are we flying a drone in Iran? The fuck would we do if Iran flew a drone in here?

    23. JR

      Right.

    24. AM

      I mean, it's just unbelievable the chauvinism and arrogance of the US (laughs) to be doing all this shit and then be like, "Okay, now you guys are a belligerent threat. We have to do something." It's like, no, you guys are the ones encircling them and closing all of their, you know... Basically just encapsulating their entire territory and threatening them over and over and over again, basically hoping for something to happen. And if you look back at the Gulf of Tonkin, there was a guy who was actually on the USS Maddox, the ship that was eventually "attacked"-

    25. JR

      Air quotes.

    26. AM

      ... and got us into the war with Vietnam, and he even said, um, "My dad was on the ship," and he said, "We had no idea why we were there, and one of the generals or captains on the ship just said, 'They want us to be hit, they want us to be attacked so they can get into a war that they want to get into.'" And that's exactly what's going on. And what's sad is, whoever's in the Navy circling Iran, they're going to be the ones who fucking die when Iran does launch back. They're sacrificing themselves for these generals' and defense contractors' profits.

    27. JR

      Now, there's some reason to believe that Iran is not being honest about its nuclear program, right? I mean, that was one of the reasons why... Wasn't that... What was the virus that the United States-

    28. AM

      Stuxnet?

    29. JR

      Yeah, Stuxnet virus that they put on the Iranian nuclear program-

    30. AM

      Mm-hmm.

  8. 22:5928:43

    Corporate media as ‘stenographers’ and the funding problem of independent journalism

    1. AM

      ... the media's been attacking him from... And the Democrats too. The media and the Democrats always attack this administration from the right whenever there's some sort of military involvement. They always want him to bomb (laughs) and go to war. It's pretty shocking. I mean, I guess not too shocking when you realize the corporate media is literally subsidized by, like, oil companies and banks and defense contractors.

    2. JR

      Now, I know you didn't have to deal with-

    3. AM

      But it's pretty crazy.

    4. JR

      You didn't have to deal with that at RT, but what do you think happens when someone is a pundit and they're on a television show and they're talking about something that has these global implications?

    5. AM

      Mm-hmm.

    6. JR

      Do you think they get talking points? Do you think they're allowed to express their own personal opinions? Or are they informed that they're supposed to toe a certain line? Like...

    7. AM

      I think there's varying levels. I think that it would be naive to say, "Okay, these people are paid to lie." I think that the maj- vast majority of people working in corporate media are lackeys for the empire. They really, truly believe that, you know, they believe that America's the greatest country in the world, they believe that we're the world's policemen. They actually believe that these countries are evil and they need to be taken out to instate, kind of, global hegemony. I truly believe that they cater to the line of American exceptionalism. And that's pretty sad, but also pretty dangerous, because they're the perfect mouthpieces for US foreign policy. I mean, they, they essentially are stenographers for whatever the government is laying out, which is really disturbing, because the premise of journalism is to actually challenge power and challenge the US government, especially when you are working in America. You're an American citizen, and there's all this destruction going on from, on behalf of your government, and you're not challenging that? Especially when it's war claims. Especially when you have assholes like John Bolton claiming (laughs) , you know, all these things are happening in these channels and, and bodies of water, and people are just like, "Okay." I mean, goddamn, you should see when fucking Mike Pompeo was talking about how Hezbollah was in Venezuela.And these people just, just printed it. They're like, "Well, Hezbollah's in Venezuela now." It's like, what are you talking about? You're literally just printing what the Trump administration's saying without even questioning these claims.

    8. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    9. AM

      It's disturbing.

    10. JR

      Do you think that the people that are talking about it on TV are just saying it because they really don't understand what they're talking about, and this just seems to be a way to cover the subject in sort of a, a way that, uh, is acceptable to the network and acceptable to the party and acceptable to this sort of idea- whether it's left or right, whate- whatever ideology they're, they're participating in?

    11. AM

      Yes, uh, that, there, there is definitely that as well, where they know kind of the line that they can't cross.

    12. JR

      Right.

    13. AM

      So even if you individually believe, you know, you think that climate change is an existential threat, you think that the war in Yemen is a serious thing that you should address, I think that you definitely get kind of knocked down in the editorial meeting-

    14. JR

      Yeah.

    15. AM

      ... before, and you're just like, "Okay, no, I, I can't do that, but what I can do is just, you know, talk about whatever-"

    16. JR

      That's, it's so weird that there's-

    17. AM

      ... the advertisers will agree with.

    18. JR

      (clears throat) In this day and age, there's not, like, a really respected independent source of news.

    19. AM

      Right.

    20. JR

      That you've got, uh, some, uh, the online stuff, which is mon- (gasps) some online stuff is very good, but some online stuff is so entangled with insults, and, and, and bullshit, and, and emotions, and, uh, distorted perceptions-

    21. AM

      Mm-hmm.

    22. JR

      ... and ego, that it's like, it sort of discredits whatever they're trying to promote, whatev- whatever ideas they're trying to get across. There's no Walter Cronkite. There's no, there's no one person who, or no one organization who you emphatically trust with their perspective on the news. Everything is either left or right. Everything is, like, flavored by an ideology.

    23. AM

      Right, it's very ideologically driven.

    24. JR

      I don't have a place that I go to...

    25. AM

      Mm-hmm.

    26. JR

      ... that I know I can get clear, unbiased, uh, emotion-free, objective analysis of any international issue.

    27. AM

      Right. Right.

    28. JR

      It's, I, it doesn't exist. I don't, I mean, unless you can tell me of one. Do you, what do you go to?

    29. AM

      I mean, I go to Real News, I go to Democracy Now!, and the only reason-

    30. JR

      But Democracy Now! is super left wing, right? Left wing, leaning, but you think they're-

  9. 28:4331:54

    Platform censorship, algorithm suppression, and Abby being labeled ‘Russian meddling’

    1. AM

      like, the corporate line. They're always the ones towing the things that basically prop up the system. And so I think people, you know, became really, really, uh, just attracted to that whole fake news mantra that Trump was saying, because people have an extreme distrust in the corporate media because of the Iraq War, because of all these things that have happened. But as you know, and as you've talked about extensively, Joe, this wave of censorship...

    2. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    3. AM

      ... that has happened in the last two years since Trump got elected because of Russian propaganda and fake news hysteria.

    4. JR

      Yeah.

    5. AM

      And it's just propped up these same institutions, um, and it's really just gone after a lot of alternative and independent media that have gone by the wayside.

    6. JR

      Yeah.

    7. AM

      Um, and, you know, people who have been propped up by right wing billionaires, and billionaires in general, are not going to be affected at the end of the day, but all of the people who have been caught up in this censorship, with the algorithms, with the deplatforming, um, it's really scary. It's really, really scary what's happened.

    8. JR

      It is, it is scary to me because the internet, in my eyes, is this unique p- place where people can get information and distribute information.

    9. AM

      Mm-hmm.

    10. JR

      And then, on top of that, you have this almost parasitic entity that is allowing you to distribute information and gather information through it, but also controlling the flow of information.

    11. AM

      Mm-hmm.

    12. JR

      And then controlling the flow in its own ideological bend, like, what, in, to, to, to sort of match its own ideas of what should and shouldn't happen, and I think they feel justified by having a guy like Trump in office. Having a guy like Trump b- come into office, then go, "Well, we have to do something about that, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna silence conservative voices, we're gonna silence conservative pundits, we're gonna silence, we'll, uh, call people alt-right and, uh, just change our algorithms to make it much more difficult for them to get propagate, for them to propagate their ideas." I, I just find that really distressing, because I think that in the w- the marketplace of ideas, you, you're supposed to...... be able to combat a bad idea with a better idea. And this is how we, this is how ideas evolve, this is how people get to communicate. You get to look at what someone's saying, look at someone, how someone's dissecting what someone's saying, and then for yourself, figure out what you believe and what you don't believe. And there should be a free exchange of information so that you can figure that out. And when you show, when someone's shown to be a bad actor or a liar or show, have deceptive news, fake news, whatever you wanna call it, though okay, now we know and this is a clear example of that, so now take it with a grain of salt whenever they say anything about anything else. But when you deplatform them and shove them aside, they say, "See? They're trying to silence us 'cause they don't believe us. Or, or they, they don't, they don't want us to be in power because they're trying to, uh, p- p- prop up whatever leftwing socialist economy that, or dictator that they wanna put into place." And it's this weird sort of situation where you've got people dictating and almost engineering our culture.

    13. AM

      Right, curating our reality.

  10. 31:5446:59

    Google’s ‘smart city’ in Toronto, surveillance capitalism, and data as the real commodity

    1. JR

      Yes. You know what's going on in Toronto?

    2. AM

      No.

    3. JR

      With, with Alphabet, the parent company of Google?

    4. AM

      No.

    5. JR

      It's a very disturbing thing to a lot of people, where they're essentially setting up blocks and they're putting cameras in these places and they're gathering data and information and they're trying to engineer a utopian city. Yeah. I was reading about it yesterday, and I was like, "No." (laughs) Like, this is a terrible idea.

    6. AM

      Google is so fucking terrifying.

    7. JR

      Like what if, what if these people don't wanna be filmed? What if these people don't want information gathered about them? Like, they're, they're st- doing it under the guise of, here it is, Alphabet's plan for Toronto depends on huge amounts-

    8. AM

      Oh, great.

    9. JR

      ... of data.

    10. AM

      Yeah, we need more data collection, data mining.

    11. JR

      But their idea is that they're going to make it easier for people to get around and smoother.

    12. AM

      But how? By like-

    13. JR

      I, I don't know.

    14. AM

      ... facial recognition? I love how they always say, "Oh, people are being sex trafficked and this will help." It's like, no, dude, this is like 0.0001% of all the people that you're, you know, data mining.

    15. JR

      It says, "Sidewalks Labs release more detailed plans for Toronto, the site of Google's sister company's first attempt to bring its tech-ified digital forward sensibility to a full-scale development project. The Sidewalks Lab, Sidewalk Labs project dates to 2017 when the Canadian city welcomed the company to an undeveloped section of its waterfront. Now, after 18 months of speculation work..."

    16. NA

      Oh, God.

    17. JR

      God damn these motherfuckers with pop-up ads.

    18. AM

      (laughs)

    19. JR

      "... speculation work and backlash from local advocates, the company has a 1,524-page master plan for the twelve, 12-acre lot called Quayside." First of all, I hate-

    20. AM

      What is this?

    21. JR

      ... the fucking name.

    22. AM

      What is it though?

    23. JR

      Quayside. What is Quayside? "Four-volume plan highlights ambitious and sometimes flashy innovations from Sidewalk Labs, which has played, pledged to spend 1.3 billion on the project if it goes forward. The company hopes to construct all the buildings with timber," which it says is better for the environment, it also catches fire, "and build an underground-"

    24. AM

      (laughs)

    25. JR

      "... pneumatic, pneumatic tube system for garbage removal. It wants residents to lean on public transit, walking, and biking rather than personal vehicles." Good luck, it's fucking zero degrees in Toronto, you assholes. "And plans to build streets with autonomous vehicles, perhaps from its sister company Waymo." They're, listen-

    26. AM

      Waymo and Waymo.

    27. JR

      ... delivery robots ... Wait, do you know what Waymo is?

    28. AM

      No.

    29. JR

      No. ............................ Uh, delivery robots might trundle down its wide sidewalks, its str- strategic use of large, very large umbrella-like coverings might make outdoor spaces comfortable all year round. No small feat in Lakeshore, Canada. Sidewalks, Sidewalk wants to designate 20% of its, of the apartments to, as affordable and another 20% as middle income." So they're, they're engineering-

    30. AM

      This is so weird, yeah.

  11. 46:591:19:37

    Democratic populism and the economics of UBI, infrastructure jobs, and student debt

    1. JR

      Who, who makes sense to you? Does Bernie make sense?

    2. AM

      Bernie is my guy. Bernie is my guy through and through, and I'll tell you why. Because A, we need Medicare for all, we need to abolish student debt, and that shit you just tax Wall Street gambling, done. Medicare for all, cut the military budget, done. I don't wanna live in a country where people are rationing insulin. I don't wanna live in a country where half of the GoFundMe campaigns are because people are gonna die if they don't get donations for healthcare. What is wrong with this country? Um, but back to Bernie, I mean, you look at the last 30 years of political advocacy. This is a guy who's been saying the same thing for 30 straight years, no matter if it's veterans' rights, about Gulf War syndrome, um, about just a political revolution is needed. I mean, he's been talking about that since he won the Senate seat initially. And you can't really say the same thing about any other candidate. And I do like what Tulsi Gabbard is saying, and I do like some of the things Elizabeth Warren's saying, but it seems like she's just making it up on the fly and adopting kind of Bernie-lite policies. And I think this is all a strategy to, to siphon all the delegates away from Bernie because we already know this third way corporate Wall Street-funded organization that's like corporate Democrats have said they want anyone but Bernie. Bernie is the biggest threat to the establishment by far.

    3. JR

      Did you see when, uh, Charlamagne called Elizabeth Warren the original Rachel Dolezal-

    4. AM

      Oh my God.

    5. JR

      ... to her, to her face?

    6. AM

      See, she's not... She doesn't have a chance.

    7. JR

      Not with that.

    8. AM

      She doesn't have a chance-

    9. JR

      Yeah.

    10. AM

      ... with the Trump shit.

    11. JR

      No, she's gonna get chewed up.

    12. AM

      All Trump has to say is Pocahontas over and over again, and she's toast.

    13. JR

      What's hilarious to me is they say Pocahontas is racist. Um, it's a fucking Disney movie. How can Pocahontas be racist?

    14. AM

      Elizabeth Warren-

    15. JR

      How is it racist-

    16. AM

      ... fucked up.

    17. JR

      (laughs) She fucked-

    18. AM

      She really, really screwed up.

    19. JR

      That's a big fuck up.

    20. AM

      It's a really big screw up.

    21. JR

      And then she wound up getting the DNA test. I am 200 times more African than she is Native American.I'm, I'm 1.6% African. (laughs)

    22. AM

      The ego of these people, man. The ego of these people.

    23. JR

      (laughs)

    24. AM

      It's like she's just so upset that Trump... Yeah, I mean, I-

    25. JR

      That's so nuts that she went and got jobs saying she was Native American.

    26. AM

      I mean, yeah. It, it's one thing to say, "I have Native American blood." It's another thing, and I don't know how much, you know, ancestry, Native American ancestry she has, but I do know that she was... You know, that was on, like, her Harvard-

    27. JR

      Yeah.

    28. AM

      ... bio and all this stuff. And it's just like, "What is going on?"

    29. JR

      Well, Jamie did the same scam.

    30. AM

      What is going on?

Episode duration: 2:16:40

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