Anti-Anti-Nazi Barbarian Hordes are Knocking Down the Gates

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Illinois National Guard begins to push back against illegal Trump deployment
by Brian Tyler Cohen and Glenn Kirschner
Brian Tyler Cohen News
Oct 7, 2025 Legal Breakdown

Legal Breakdown: Illinois National Guard begins to push back against illegal Trump deployment



Transcript

You're watching the legal breakdown.
Glenn, we have a really really important
development here. You and I have spoken
at length about what happens in the
event that Donald Trump asks troops or
law enforcement to uh to carry out some
some action that's illegal or that runs
counter to their oath of office. We now
have the first instance where it seems
like we're actually butdding up against
that reality. Can you explain what
happened in Illinois? Yeah, Brian, a
really important development because as
an old army guy myself, we are taught
that we must obey lawful orders, but
even more importantly, we must disobey
unlawful orders, patently unlawful
orders. And we have not heard any
rumblings from the military that they
have been disregarding or refusing to
obey anything Trump has told them to do,
including, you know, blowing Venezuelan
boats out of international waters, which
clearly violates every law known to man,
domestic law, international law, and
military law, or the law of war. Well,
what we now have is an attempt by Donald
Trump to federalize the Illinois State
National Guard. And we may have just
seen our first military push back. I
want to read a quote from some brand new
reporting. The governor did not receive
any calls from any federal officials. A
statement from Illinois Governor JB
Pritsker's office read, quote, "The
Illinois National Guard communicated to
the Department of War, that's the
Department of Defense, that the
situation in Illinois does not require
the use of the military and as a result,
the governor opposes the deployment of
the National Guard under any status."
Close quote. Brian, that's huge. I'm not
going to say this is a turning point,
although we'll see how history records
it. But, you know, remember when he
unlawfully federalized the California
National Guard and he refused to go
through Governor Nuome's office as the
law requires him to do. What happened?
Well, the California National Guard was
federalized and deployed to the streets
of Los Angeles. It looks like Illinois
is taking another approach. They're
saying no. the situation doesn't warrant
it. You did not go through the
governor's office as the law requires
and there is no factual basis to
federalize the Illinois State National
Guard. So, as of right now, and these
are rapidly developing facts and
circumstances, as of right now, it looks
like we have our first significant
military push back and we'll see, you
know, what happens moving forward.
Glenn, what happens practically
speaking? Like, I understand that you
and I can talk about, okay, you can, you
know, disobey uh an unlawful order, but
it it's easy to say that from where we
sit, from behind computer screens,
whatever it may be. When you're like,
practically speaking, when you're faced
with the prospect of following an
illegal order that was inherently given
to you by somebody higher up, isn't it
more difficult to just say no to that
person than we're kind of giving them
credit for? So what happens like in
these real life scenarios where they
actually are given an unconstitutional
illegal or unlawful order by somebody
who's their superior. I'm assuming it's
not just that easy to disregard that
order. And so what happens in these
instances? So, first of all, I was an
army JAG and part of my responsibilities
included not only prosecuting court
marshal cases when soldiers would
violate the law um whether they were
military offenses or civilian type
offenses, you know, murder, rape, theft,
those are civilian type offenses. And um
disobeying a lawful order, you know,
going awall absent absent without leave,
you know, there were sort of um uniquely
military offenses, too. But the other
thing I did was I gave commanders advice
on, for example, what orders are lawful
and what orders are not lawful. And now
to answer your question, it's not easy.
It's not easy for a military member who
is trained to obey the commands, the
orders given by their superiors. It's
not easy for them to say, you know,
captain, major, colonel, general, I
cannot comply with that order because
it's not lawful. But here's the thing,
Brian. Nobody said military service was
easy. Nobody said it was going to be
easy to support and defend the
Constitution against all enemies,
foreign and especially domestic. But
nothing is more important than that oath
every single member of the military
takes. So whereas it might be hard,
nothing, especially at at this moment in
our nation's history, nothing could be
more important than service members
obeying the laws and standing up um in
the event there is an unlawful order
given. Now, I want to talk about what's
happening in Chicago right now because
we've already seen that an analogous uh
situation when he deployed these troops
in Los Angeles that was shut down by a
judge because um his deployment didn't
satisfy any of the three thresholds that
needed to be met, which is that there
was uh an an insurrection or rebellion.
There was no invasion. There was no
failure of the local government to be
able to effectuate its laws. The same
thing happened in Oregon where we just
had a judge uh in Oregon block Trump's
deployment there. uh because again these
three thresholds, none of those were
met. And so I'm assuming he's going to
try and do the same thing in Chicago
here and claim that there was some
failure of the local government to be
able to effectuate its laws or that
there was some invasion or insurrection
or rebellion there. We we've seen in
instance after instance that Trump's not
able to meet this bar. And so and so
what happens next as far as Chicago's is
concerned and and I guess moreover
beyond that what happens to the people
that he tries to deploy there knowing
that there's no basis to do so.
All good questions and none of it has a
clear answer. I assume what Donald Trump
will do is he will either send a
message, a missive, a threat to
Illinois, to the governor and to the uh
National Guard, the state national guard
that you better do this now or there's
going to be hell to pay. I hope Illinois
uh stands strong and refuses to give in
to Donald Trump's lawlessness, be
bullied into changing course now that
they've taken a stand. Um, and then the
next thing Donald Trump could perhaps do
is just go ahead and send, you know,
actual military troops, army, air force,
you know, navy, marines, uh, into
Chicago, into Illinois, which, you know,
would also inspire instant legal
challenges. And let let's talk about
what we are facing right now. Here's the
backdrop against which this battle in
Illinois is being fought and is
unfolding. After the judge issued a
temporary restraining order in Portland,
Oregon, a Trump appointed judge, I might
add, because the judge concluded that
Donald Trump's actions are untethered to
facts, to reality. What did Donald Trump
do? He ordered the California National
Guard, which is still apparently
federalized, to go to Portland. I mean,
if that is not a direct violation of
probably the rights of the California
National Guard, but even setting that
aside, it clearly violates in substance
and in spirit the temporary restraining
order that the federal judge in Oregon
just issued. You know, this makes Donald
Trump, you know, we've heard of serial
killers, a serial violator of the
Constitution and of court orders. You
know, it seems like he's trying to bring
our American crisis to a head but quick.
And I don't think any of this will serve
him well, particularly against another
important backdrop, Brian, when he and
Pete Hegsth addressed all of the
military's commanders and treated them
like they were, you know, middle school
students who knew nothing about military
service, who knew nothing about the oath
that they take of loyalty to the
Constitution, not to a tyrant, a
dictator, or an autocrat. I actually
think that may have galvanized the
military against Donald Trump's
lawlessness because it was on full
display that Donald Trump is completely
unfit to be commanderin-chief of the
armed forces. When he tells the military
leadership things like, "I want you to
use American cities as military training
grounds." What does that mean? The
military trains to fight and win wars
and kill the enemy in the process. And
Donald Trump told those military
commanders, "That's what I want you to
do in American cities and he added that
the American people are the enemy from
within." It doesn't surprise me that
right after that horrific address to the
troops, we now have for the first time
some military faction, the Illinois
State National Guard, standing up,
pushing back, and apparently telling
Donald Trump and his Secretary of
Defense, "No."
Well, look, this isn't uh out of
character for Trump. We learned from his
former Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper,
in his first term that he wanted to
shoot protesters in the leg. These are
people exercising their first amendment
rights. And so this is just the natural
progression for someone who views
himself as a wartime president. But the
enemy as far as Trump is concerned is
Americans. And like you know I I mean
that through the looking glass is the
only thing I can say as far as that's
concerned. This is obviously a
continuing a story that's continuing to
develop. So for those who are watching,
if you want to follow along, please make
sure to subscribe. The links to both of
our channels are right here on the
screen. Great way to support our work.
It is completely free and a great way to
support independent media. So again,
those links are right here on the
screen. If you haven't yet subscribed,
please go ahead and subscribe. I'm Brian
Taylor Cohen.
And I'm Glenn Kersner.
You're watching the Legal Breakdown.
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Iran's Deadly Missile SHOCKS Israel, War Inevitable | Mohammad Marandi & Ramzy Baroud
Danny Haiphong
Oct 8, 2025

Israel just made a stunning admission as Iran tests a deadly new missile that has the Netanyahu regime cowering in fear. Mohammad Marandi weighs in with the threat of Israel-Iran war 2.0 imminent.



Transcript

There's been a lot of fear coming out of Israeli media, the Iranian military. They have tested one of their most
powerful ballistic missiles. This comes after given these snapback conversations
on sanctions, given renewed talks about aggression on Iran that Iran will respond in a deadly manner. And Iranian
international conducted this interview with Israel's ambassador to the UN, if that is a oxymoron, Danny Denan. And I
think we might find his comments quite interesting about what is actually happening when it comes to uh uh
Israel's capabilities. Could some people say Iran could become similar to Lebanon where Israel can can come in and um do military strikes when
they see fit? How would you respond to that? Well, I don't think that is the case. I think they the infrastructure that they
built in the past was very complicated. So, it's not going to happen very fast. And here you had a general admission
that Israel is not considering strikes again. And in large part because it can't become another Lebanon. It can't
become another site where Israel just has kind of cart blanch abilities to hit whenever they want.
Well, that media outfit is actually funded by the Israeli regime. And during
the 12- day war, they were based in Tel Aviv and and Als and and sobbing for the
the the colonizers and they are deeply despised among ordinary Iranians. People
are no longer afraid. The Iranians when the Israelis carried out this blitzkrieak attack and slaughtered
ordinary people. some uh I think I said on your show during the the during that
time that quite near to where I live, they just destroyed an apartment block,
killing everyone inside so that they could kill one person. Uh I think 20ome kids were killed in that building and
then Western media calls it a a an intelligence coup. There's no
intelligence coup. I mean, no senior Iranian official or scientist or general
hides in Thran. They live in their homes like everyone else. People in their neighborhood know where they live. It's
no secret. And uh for them just to knock down an apartment built block, which is
of course what they do all the time, the Israelis. They've been doing that in Lebanon during the war. I I was in
Lebanon last year when Seah Hassan Nasulah was martyed. They just massacred, you know, people and and
Western media would they would frame it as Hezbollah strongholds or Hezbollah
targets in order to hide the fact that they were basically targeting ordinary
people. They just wanted to destroy Beirut and Balbach and and other cities
and slaughter women and children just like they did, as I said, where they killed all the kids in this in this
family and the father who were Americans. That's just what they do. But the Iranians are not afraid. As soon as
the war started, after the blitz creek and after the murder of all these senior military officials, the Iranians struck
back and they struck back hard and they did it day after day and they basically
uh controlled the skies over Palestine. The Israelis could do nothing about
Iranian missiles. And during the last few days, if we go back and recall what
Steve Bannon said, and Steve Bannon is someone who knows what's going on in the United States, he said the real story is
that Trump saved Netanyahu during the last three days of the war, three, four days of the war, Netanyahu was begging
for a ceasefire, and Trump was sending messages to Iran to please stop. And ultimately, he had to give concessions
until Iran finally accepted a halt in the strike. So no one is afraid of the
Israeli regime anymore. We saw Iranians go to the streets under missile fire
across the country in support of the armed forces. They thought that by killing all these people they could
create chaos in the country. But they did the opposite. They brought people
under uh one command and steadfast. They made them steadfast and determined to
defeat this this genocidal enemy. this enemy that considers everyone subhuman
except for themselves. This enemy which has the full support of the west. When they carried out the war against Iran,
the Europeans said Israel has the right to defend itself. So they launch a war and they have a right to when they're
killing Palest slaughtering Gazin families. They have a right to defend themselves. When they slaughter people
in Lebanon, they have a right to defend themselves. when they slaughter ordinary people in Yemen, the 31
journalists, they targeted those journalists. Did you see any outrage in
the New York Times or the Washington Post or the or the Guardian or the
Independent or those who pretend to be uh alternative or or different from No,
they're they're all they're because they're all the same. They're all controlled. It's either controlled
opposition or they're, you know, or they're they tow the government line. So, but all of these are carried out to
defend themselves. And I think that uh the 12-day war between Iran and Israel
was a a defining factor in this war. The biggest the biggest change I mean the
number one defeat for the Israeli regime in these two years is its delegitimization
in the eyes of the world. The Israeli regime was never legitimate,
neither within the 1967 borders or beyond the 1967 borders. In fact, um
Desmond Tutu, who your younger viewers may not know,
but he was a an important force in in South Africa during apartheid.
uh he went to Palestine and uh visited after the fall of
apartheid South Africa and he said that the situation in Palestine is far far
worse than what he saw in South Africa during a part time and this is before
October the 7th. We're not talking about Desmond Tutu's passed away years ago. So
the biggest change is that in the eyes of the world that have been um that that
for the for the most part were ignorant about what was going on before they were being mis misled by western media,
western think tanks, western elites, western diplomats and journalists and politicians.
They now see the regime for what it is. It is carrying out a holocaust. It is as illegitimate as Hitler. In fact, this is
in many ways more evil because they're doing it in front of the eyes of the world. They're doing it in front of
cameras every day where we we never saw what Hitler did. We never saw what the
tyrants of human history did. We read about them in history books. Maybe a picture or two from Algeria,
maybe a, you know, a grainy picture from Kenya or something from, you know,
India. We hear about these things or we read about these things, but here we're seeing the most horrific images ever
literally every single day. And even though Twitter and
Facebook and Instagram and others are do doing their best to to to make them all
disappear and of course Tik Tok will do a really good job quite soon to make everything disappear,
but uh but the regime has become delegitimized. However, the 12-day war
was a defining moment because for once, someone hit back really hard and the
Israeli regime was losing the war and they had to beg for a ceasefire. They were defeated by Hezbollah in 2006.
But this is something very different. They were hit very hard. And the regime
today, if it was to attack Iran again, it would be much worse because the Iranians the the regime gave it its its
its its be best shot. They used everything they had. This was a regime
change operation as they call it. They use all the latest technology. I mean
the uh Ukrainian regime could only dream of the weapons. Zalinski could have can
only dream of the weapons that Israel has, Israeli regime has.
But the and the Iranians were caught off guard. The Iranians I mean there is something I should point out. The Iranians knew that an attack was going
to happen. They knew that an attack was going to happen that night in fact, but they didn't know that the regime was
going to target the state. They thought they were going to bomb the nuclear program or the bomb military bases, but
they didn't think that they were going to go rogue. And that was a mistake. The Iranian the Iranians miscalculated. It
was a failure. But despite that, they turned things around and they the tide
turned and they defeated the regime. So the the regime is now is is now
illegitimate. It is vulnerable. And what Yemen is doing, it is reminding us of
the vulnerability of the regime. But again, I have to stress what Ansar has
said repeatedly, the armed forces of Yemen, the government of Yemen has said repeatedly, "Stop the Holocaust and we
will stop the siege. End the massacre of children and we will
stop blocking ships from crossing through the Red Sea." It's quite simple.
What Ansar is doing, what the Yemen armed forces are doing, what the Yemeni government and people are doing is that
they're implementing the genocide convention. Something that the West not only
refrains from doing, it refuses to do. It is doing the exact opposite. in that video of the Tel Aviv funded outlet
Iranian international it's almost like they were trying to go the ambassador into um cheering on another uh another
iteration a round two against Iran uh but your reaction to the response which
was um you know I don't know the Iranian they say infrastructure is civilian you
know infrastructure is troublesome uh what is the impact of Iran's ability to
stand up, to fight back, to not be afraid, as Professor Morandi said, and to do things like as conversations are
happening with the E3 around snapback sanctions and there are demands for Iran to get rid of its not only nuclear
program but also its ballistic missile program that Iran is testing their missiles because they're getting ready
to defend themselves again. Uh what kind of message is this sending? Absolutely. I I think this has a lot to
do with the degree of arrogance um u within the Israeli establishment.
Um you know you are always fighting against enemies who are much weaker than you are and with time Israel kind of
reached this calculation that it's invincible that that no one is strong enough to fight Israel. I mean is the
Israeli um arm uh industry, arms industry is um at one point I think it
was number seven or eight in terms of global exports. Israel has been seen as
kind of a heavy lifter in the arms market you know and you know and and Iran has been a country under an
American siege a western American siege for such a long time. So they must have
reached some major miscalculations there. not only regarding Iran's capabilities
but also regarding the the nature of the Iranian response thinking that well you
know we are the you know we have this insurance and the insurance is Washington no matter what happens
Washington will always come to the rescue Washington will never allow us to sink financially economically
uh you know Washington will provide even when Ansarah placed a siege on uh Elat
and and and the Red Sea uh effectively shutting down the uh the the the port
which one of the main sources of food uh to Israel. The Arabs came to the rescue
and by the way they are still coming to the rescue providing this kind of alternative
uh you know u US sponsored alternative route to get the Israelis fed and and to
make sure that their kids have toys and their pharmacies have medicine and all the rest while their own brethren in
Gaza are you know being raped and die from hunger and pulverized by Israeli
bombs. So, Israel is always rest assured that Washington will always make sure
that no matter how bad things get for Israel, it will be okay. That was the
understanding. Um, and we have to also place that within a context and the context is that Iran has been the top
target for for Israel for such a long time. I mean, we go back to the Iraq war
where the neoconservatives made made it clear to the American public that the threat was not the
threat was not only Iraq and the Iraqi military as far as Israel is concerned,
but also Iran. And even before the
American Western war on Iraq, Netanyahu was speaking in Congress, was speaking
at in various US platforms telling them Iran is even a bigger threat than Iraq.
So he kind of been building this massive political discourse around the idea that
Iran needs to be eliminated for Israel to finally feel a sense of safety. This
goes for, you know, this been going on for a long time. And we all remember Richard Pearl with his famous, you know,
securing the realms document done on behalf of the Netanyahu or for the sake
of the Netanyahu government, kind of trying to rearrange the Middle East in
Israel's favor, you know, rolling back Damascus,
you know, regime change in Iraq, you know, uh, eliminating Iran and that sort
of thing. And and then that opportunity came the opportunity came with the the rise of
the Trump administration. One of the most foolish administrations in the history of that country. Yes, they are
all to various degrees have been quite criminal. But there is a difference
between c being criminal but also criminal and and foolish as well. this
administration. I don't even know if we are to as future historians when they
try to try to understand the doctrine. What is the Trump administration's
doctrine uh in the Middle East or globally? Nobody knows. Nobody knows.
It's a huge mess. His speech at the United Nations is one of the most embarrassing political spectacles not
only in the history of the US but in the history of the UN as well. Well, he took
advantage of this criminal uh um you know fundamentalist foolish
administration to finally carry out the major attack on Iran. And as professor
Morandi has said indeed they have gone all the way. I mean they they activated
not only their entire uh air defense or or their entire uh um you know um uh air
force uh but also an air defenses but also intelligence. They went for the
civilian infrastructure. They were trying to get to you take advantage of
the political uh schism in Iranian society which is natural and normal in
any society. They tried to take advantage of all of these things and to finally take down uh the Iranian
government and they miserably failed. You know, there's a saying that says if
you if you um uh hit the king, you better kill the king or something of that nature. And they actually went
forth. They were trying to kill the king and they couldn't. And as a result, Iran has been restoring
uh um you know, all of its defenses, its radars in particular. They have been building this uh kind of like filling
all the loopholes regarding intelligence and so forth. What can Israel do in the
next strike that they having done in the previous one? What are the surprise
cards that Israel will have in the next confrontation with Iran? They have
already pretty much showed all of their cards. It would be shocking to see any new elements uh to um the Israeli attack
on Iran that have not been used so far. And that creates a huge problem here
because again Netanyahu has been basing his entire career since he became prime
minister I think the first time in 1996 until today on this crown jewel the
taking down of the Iranian government and he had that chance and he miserably
failed and nothing has changed as far as the military equation in the Middle East neither in Gaza nor in in Yemen nor
elsewhere. So what can they do that they haven't already done? Now we already know and I'm going to finish with that
that Israel has already been on the path of what they call suicide nationalism.
You know where you know heck with the consequences. Let's just do what we can and let's just see. Let's see what the
outcome is going to be. So Israel could in fact go and start a new war against
Iran. And the Iranians must be very much aware of that considering the fact that
Israel just hit one of the closest allies of Washington outside of NATO and
that is DHA. So wouldn't they try to hit Iran again? Yes, they would. They could, they might. They will. But what can they
achieve apart from that? I think very little if any at all. And I think the
counterattack from Iran most likely is going to be even more decisive than the last one. uh United States side uh as
Ramsey was saying has a very confused policy right now in West Asia but the default is of course uh total support of
Israel and that total support of Israel by the Trump administration is getting quite petty and almost pathetic. Uh
during UN week, we had stories like this. Iranian diplomats in the US being barred from shopping at retailers like
Costco uh as a national security measure. And this comes in the context,
Professor Randi, of big conversations happening. maybe you can help us understand uh because uh while the Trump
administration is putting Iran kind of in the in the back uh seat area given uh
uh everything that Ramsay just said, all the challenges uh that it faces, there still is this question of snapback
sanctions and Iran's participation in so-called nuclear inspection where you
have lawmakers pushing for a complete withdrawal from the IAEA and uh there's
been some back and forth around that. So, uh talk about where Iran is
regarding uh its position visav the US and Israel uh as these uh so-called
negotiations go back and forth. I think Iran recently just said too that US negotiations out of the question.
They're only talking to Europeans now uh lightly and they're supposed to be snapback sanctions coming soon. Your
thoughts? You know, Danny, the the US is fully supportive of Israel, obviously,
and Trump, for whatever reason, whether it's because of Epstein or uh or
whatever, he he is totally in bed with Netanyahu. But um but the American people aren't.
And even after the death of Charlie Kirk, when we see people pointing figure
fingers at the Israeli regime, uh so many people in the United States believe it. I don't know what happened to
Charlie Kirk. Uh I know that the FBI um official uh version doesn't make much
sense. But the very fact that people point fingers at the regime or when they
now when they speak about 911, they no longer believe the official story and
they start pointing fingers at the Israeli fingers at the Israeli regime or JFK and so on. shows how despised the
regime is, how widely despised it is. Now, you can shut down Tik Tok, you can
shut down everything else, but people have woken up. People are seeing the reality. A holocaust is not something
that you can really hide that easily. So,
today the world that we live in is very different from the world that we lived in two years ago. just these two years
have been have made things fundamentally different and and the regime by the way is has been shown to be detrimental to
US interests. It is dragging down the entire west with it because the world
sees this as a a a holocaust being carried out by the collective west.
people, young people in the west, people across the world, they're looking in horror. In future the United States
cannot talk about human rights or human values or freedom or freedom because
increasingly we see people being uh oppressed in the United States, people
being jailed, people being deported, people being uh taken to court, uh people losing
their platform simply for for defending Palestine, simply for protesting against
a genocide. It's is quite stunning. So the soft power of the United States, the
soft power of the West has been utterly demolished across the world. People have
much more respect for nonwestern countries than Western countries despite
the fact that the West has been demonizing them successfully somewhat for decades, for many decades, Iran in
particular. So this this is a fundamental shift and I think as Ramsay pointed out the
Israelis are not all knowing. Uh they miscalculated in this war and they
failed. Uh it was a blitz creek but they still failed. And not only does it show
the the power of Iran and the public legitimacy of the state but it shows how
the Israeli regime miscalculates. And it also shows how uh how much Iran knows
about Israel, how much Iran knows about the regime, that Iranian missiles could
strike their targets with uh great effect and to get right through those
many layers of of defenses that are that have been put together by the Americans
and the Europeans and through radar bases in Turkey and across the Persian
Gulf. as they used the airspace of Jordan and Syria, they still failed. And it shows,
by the way, that these missile capabilities that Iran has, which is
probably the among the two, three, four most advanced missile systems in the
world alongside probably the the Chinese and and the Russians. It shows that
despite sanctions, what a country can do and what an independent country can do
and what people in the global south can do. We no longer live in the world where the west can pretend and claim that they
have all the knowledge and that we must go to them to learn how to do things and
they're they're always a step ahead of us. And that is one of the myths that the Israeli regime always used, always
pretended that it knew more, that it it had better intelligence, that it had better capabilities. But it lost in this
war. And it lost in this war despite the fact that the western that western intelligence agencies collectively were
helping them. their embassies in Iran, their embassies in countries around Iran, and of course, sadly regional
countries, countries neighboring Iran, the Republic of Ozaran, a close ally of
the Israeli regime, Erdogan, an ally of Netanyahu of sorts in the Persian Gulf.
Despite that, this the country was able to defeat the regime. And next time round, it's going to be far worse
because Iran is now prepared. They've given it their best shot and now Iran has learned their capabilities and
they're building up their defensive and offensive capabilities. But this I think is a big win for the global south. This
should give self-confidence to young people everywhere that we can do things
that they can do things in their own countries whether it's in South Africa
or South Southern Latin America or whether it's in Central Asia or South
Asia, West Asia, East Asia, these young people, they can do wonders and no one
can stop them as long as that they have that determination. The Israeli regime is
really the final colony of the west, the final major colony in the west that has
occupied a part of the global south. But the coloniz the colonization of the mind
still exists. It is something that we've been dealing with for hundreds of years. Our minds have been colonized for so
long. But this is gradually collapsing. What an every time Ansar Allah hits back
something something breaks in you know something breaks some part of this
colonization falls falls from this broader uh network
from this broader image and I think that Iran's response uh the resistance
together and of course as of course the people of Gaza the the heroic resistance
in Gaza uh Hamas, uh Islamic, Jihad, and the other smaller groups, all of them, and
the people, the women and the children who who who simply refuse to give up
their land, who simply refuse to leave despite uh the the genocide. They're
they're showing the global north, the West, that uh they are not all powerful.
The West is destroying itself. Every child that they kill, they're destroying themselves. So they're being destroyed
economically. They're being And by the way, as the West declines economically
by antagonizing everyone, literally, everyone, China, Russia, Iran, but now
India, and Brazil among others, they're antagonizing everyone. So, and as the
West declines, does that benefit the Israeli regime? No. Because this is this puny regime is completely dependent on
handouts from the west. Without a powerful west, they are not powerful. So
as the fortunes of the west decline, so do the fortunes of the Israeli regime. So their economies are on the decline.
Their military is on the decline. They their soft power is destroyed. The world
is changing much faster than we think. These are very dark times. And I and I'm
not saying that this darkness is going to go away anytime soon.
But those who have imposed this darkness upon us and upon the world, they are
faltering. They are growing weak. They are growing vulnerable. And it shows.
And the best thing about it is that young people in these countries are
waking up. young Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, people from all walks of life,
they're waking up and they want something different. They want a sane government. They want a sane uh
political establishment that builds America, that builds Britain, that BR
builds France and builds Germany and has a decent relationship with the rest of
the world. And that's what the rest of us want too. Even those people in the west who are
anger angry about immigrants and dark-kinned people like ourselves,
they are coming to the recognition that all these wars are the reason why people
have immigrated there. Otherwise, people are are fine where they were fine where
they lived. The the Syrians were fine until the dirty war. The Libyans were
fine until they destroyed the country. People across Latin America were fine until the Americans destroyed their
economies and their governments by by supporting dictatorships and cruel and brutal regimes and and and so on and so
forth. Afghanistan. You know, you you may not know this, Danny, uh but since it's a country
neighboring Iran before the revolution in Iran,
Afghanistan had uh in many ways it was more developed than Iran. I I have to go
back to the numbers but there there uh the the percentage of people who went to
school or uh I mean the our region was very bad. The Iran was very bad under
the sha despite all the oil that was exported but but the situ but
Afghanistan and Iraq were both countries that were they were they were doing okay
compared to other countries in the region. It was the United States that destroyed Afghanistan. It wasn't even
the Soviet Union so much. I mean, I'm not saying the invasion of Afghanistan was an unacceptable crime, but the
United States encouraged them to invade. We now know that Carter and his national
security advisor, they plotted in Afghanistan to support these so-called
mujahedin in order to create a Vietnam for the Soviet Union. So, they destroyed
Afghanistan. So these millions of Afghans who've gone to Europe, they didn't go because they just didn't like
their towns and villages and they wanted some to live somewhere else. They went because they were all destroyed. The
same is true in Iraq. The same is true elsewhere. So people in the west are waking up to the reality that the
western political establishment has brought this upon its own people and they are continuing to brutalize people
across the world. I therefore am optimistic about the future. I'm I'm not
pessimistic. But that doesn't mean that things are going to change overnight. They may even get worse. But ultimately,
I think the fact that people are waking up is the most important thing of all.
What we want is a world where people understand what's going on. We we don't
want to live in a world where people are lulled by western media and by the rich and the powerful who create these
narratives and people uh believe those narratives and as a result they they
close their eyes to death and destruction and genocide and and the holocaust.

[admin]

Max Blumenthal: Charlie Kirk UPDATE | Israel-Iran War to ERUPT
Dialogue Works
Streamed live 7 hours ago



Transcript

Hi everybody. Today's Wednesday, October 8, 2025 and our dear friend Max Bloomal
joins us today. Welcome back, Max. Good to see you, Nema. Please subscribe and hit like button to
help us reaching more people. And you know that you can follow Max on the gray
zone. They have a YouTube channel and on their website. You will find a lot of
stuff there, a lot of information. They're doing a tremendous job there.
Max, let's start with one of the latest news on the case of the Charlie Kirk,
the assassination of Charlie Kirk. We've learned from the text message that came out that he was asked by his donors to
cancel Tuckel Carlson and he refused and that's why he lost one of the main
donors of his program and he said 24 hours before these tech messages and he
said he's going to he's considering leaving the Israeli pro-Israeli cause.
Your take on what has happened? How do you find the situation with the Charlie Kelks story? Well, these new text
messages, which were dated to, I think, 24 to 48 hours before
he was killed, are bombshell. and they confirm everything that I've been
reporting since I started reporting after his murder on the fact that he was
beginning to become alienated by the Zionist billionaires who had made him
who he was, who had fueled his rise, who had fueled his career. And so I went through this three-part investigation
and in the third part finally landed on the name of one of his biggest donors who had built him up from the beginning
named Robert Schillman who is not just an anti-Palestinian donor who uh donates heavily to friends
of the IDF and to the settlement enterprise in the occupied West Bank but
is an anti-Islam donor has donated loads of money to Steven Yaxley Lenin aka a
Tommy Robinson who's fueling a religious war in the UK to the career of Laura
Loomer to Gilders figures who are hostile to Islam period
and Robert Schillman was early on a big backer of Charlie Kirk and he pulled out
of a $2 million donation. This was, you know, these rumors were going around
in conservative circles and I managed to confirm them with by even getting Robert Schillman himself on the phone. And
then, you know, Candace Owens begins a series of live streams. I mean, she had
been live streaming about this from the beginning, entertaining not just the
facts that, you know, we've confirmed about Charlie Kirk having been alienated
by pro-Israel donors, but, you know, also various theories about his
assassination. And she comes under heavy attack from many of the influencers who
were around Charlie Kirk at the end from the Zionist world who were pushing him to stay in line with Netanyahu who were
basically cutouts for Netanyahu and who were feeding him talking points ahead of
his next campus tour, knowing that he was going to be bombarded with critical questions about his support for Israel
and that he wasn't really particularly enthusiastic to answer them. And so Candace Owens gets attacked. Her
credibility is being called into question. And figures like Josh Hammer,
who is a Newsweek editor at large, sort of a enforcer for Netanyahu in the
media, who is part of these small meetings with Charlie Kirk of less than 10 Zionist activists, feeding him
talking points all the way up to the end. Says Candace Owens is a huge liar. Uh, none of this is true about Charlie
Kirk leaving the fold. he was pro-Israel, ride or die to the very end.
And then she drops the bomb. These text messages showing that Charlie Kirk was
furious with Robert Schillman pulling out the $2 million because he wouldn't
uh he he wouldn't refuse to host Tucker Carlson, who's become very critical of Israel.
and he said, "These Jewish donors are playing to the stereotypes, and after this, I'm done with the
pro-Israel cause." He basically was threatening all of them because he felt blackmailed,
as I reported, for hosting Tucker Carlson, and he said, "If you keep it up, I'm going to bring Candace Owens
back." So, he was really losing it. Candace Owens got a hold of these texts. She released them. She did not reveal
the names of all of the people in these chat groups, but one of them was indeed
Josh Hammer. Now, here's where it gets crazy. Josh Hammer
on September 9th dredged up a Donald Trump tweet from
2013 calling for publicly executing I think
at the time he was calling for publicly executing drug dealers, but it just said they if they're publicly executed that
will send a strong message. It's an old tweet. Josh Hammer just
thought of it for some reason and he tweets it out and quotes quote tweets it
based. You know that's really a cool thing to say. Why why did he tweet that
24 hours before Charlie Kirk was publicly executed? I mean he wasn't publicly assassinated.
I don't have any evidence of Josh Hammer or the Israel lobby being involved in Charlie Kirk's assassination. It's just
weird. And it's also highly dishonest of all of these figures from Bill Aman, the
billionaire Netanyahu cutout to Josh Hammer to all these other figures around
Charlie Kirk to Netanyahu himself who tried to claim his legacy to still assert that Charlie Kirk wanted to
support Israel all the way to the end when their own behavior is what alienated him. He wasn't exactly uh
moved by the suffering of Palestinians. He was still tweeting out anti-Islam
statements. He was probably still trying to hold on to uh Robert Schillman's money.
But in the end, he was he had I mean like 24 hours before he was killed, he had basically lost it and said, "I'm
leaving the pro-Israel cause." And this is before he's going to go on a nationwide campus tour where he's going to be bombarded with questions about
Israel. This could have been potentially disastrous for the Israel lobby and the
cause of Israel in the United States to have its most important non-governmental gentile asset actually criticizing or
entertaining criticism of Israel at these gigantic kind of arena size events.
But we'll never know. Yeah, Max,
when it comes to Charlie Kirk and his movement, do you think that it seems that Israel
somehow feels that they need to do something with the public opinion in the United States? It's not just about the
Charlie K and his movement. It's all about the media in the United States. What is at stake for Israel in the
United States when it comes to media? Well, it's it's this is the way Netanyahu understands it and I and I
guess most Israelis at this point is that they can keep committing genocide and still hold on to the American public
and the Western public in general uh by position positioning themselves as
the saviors of Western civilization. And it's just not working. I mean, if they
would stop shredding children, shredding people, killing anywhere from
90 to 150 people and wounding hundreds every day, senselessly destroying
cities, carrying out ethnic cleansing, which we all can see, despite Twitter X's increasing efforts to censor
everything we see under on the grounds that it's sensitive material, while showing pornography freely. You can see
it on Twitter X with a click of a button. um they they wouldn't need to
invest the foreign ministry's budget of $150 million for the year of 2025 for
husbar or propaganda inside the United States. The Israeli government has just taken
out a $4.5 million contract with a lobbying firm to basic to to attempt to
hack the brains of evangelical Christians going to church in four major
western metropolises, Las Vegas, Phoenix, the Los Angeles area, and
um Denver. And evangelical churches in these areas will
be offered a partnership program to geoence their church area. Meaning that
all churchgoers will have their phones flooded with ads
and programming by the Israeli government through this lobbying firm
promoting Israeli tourism. and they will be given uh v virtual reality October
7th experiences inside the church and then their phones will be targeted with
ads as they leave just simply for entering this geoenced area. It's an
unbelievable psychological attack on American evangelical Christians which I
think will produce more alienation. Brad Parscal, Trump's former campaign
manager, has been given $1.5 million a month in a foreign agent contract from
Israel to not just recruit influencers, but to
uh game the long lang language models of chat GPT and other AI mechanisms in
favor of Israel to essentially uh Zionize the algorithm. I don't know
how they're going to do that. Uh they're also paying influencers, a very small
codery of influencers who are positioned as sort of anti-woke influencers because the problem is now on the right.
They're paying them anywhere between six $6,100
to $7,100 per post to do propaganda posts in
support of Israel. Uh, one potential influencer who's getting this massive
payday is named Lizzie Sevetski, and she recently appeared in an Israeli marina.
She went on what appeared to be a pleasure yacht that belonged to an Israeli and claimed that it had been
captured from the flotilla and that she found a margarita machine, condoms, and
needles, and that the flotillaa passengers were actually shooting up with heroin. So, this is the kind of
propaganda that Israel's paying for. And you can look at the replies to these
posts. It's all negative. There's there are $7,000 per post memes mocking the
influencers. It's producing a horrendous backlash. And so the other talking point
that we're hearing from Israel's bought and paid for influencers is that the negative backlash they're getting is the
result of an Iranian and Qatari influence operation and that Iran and Qatar are the ones that are actually
responsible for all this American anger about the piles of dead civilians in
Gaza. Uh, one of those paid influencers or ostensibly paid influencers is CNN's
Van Jones who made a joke on real time with Bill Maher. Bill Maher being a, you
know, bootlicker of Netanyahu, an anti-Islam new atheist who hosts a show
on HBO. And Van Jones said, you know, Qatar and Iran have young people seeing
pictures of dead Palestinian baby, dead Palestinian baby, Diddy, dead Palestinian baby. And the whole panel,
including Thomas Freriedman, the New York Times columnist, erupted in laughter at this joke about dead
Palestinian babies. But that's the Israeli talking point is that we're not actually reacting to reality. Our
indignation is not pure. It's the result of a foreign influence operation. And
it's pure projection because everything they're doing in our country represents
the most substantial, corrupt, scandalous, and toxic foreign influence
and foreign meddling operation in the history of the United States. It's
simply Israel gate. And yet the media treats it as uh business as usual. And
increasingly the media is controlled by it as Israel moves in through Netanyahu's billionaire cutouts to buy
key US media assets. Max, here is what we saw from Laura
Loomer. She's talking about I don't want to see Laura Loomer. Don't show me Laura. It's too early.
Yeah. Yeah. No, you can show show you can show it. It's okay. I was just joking.
Yeah. What has happened? She's talking about she talked with Congresswoman
Anna Paulina and she Anna Paulina Luna. Yeah. Yeah. They're talking about China being
behind the one of the groups, you know, connected to the FBI investigation
and for ties to Tyler Robinson. It seems that they're trying to connect China to
the case of Charlie Ker. What is that all about? Is the Israel just picking a
fight in order to be closer to the neocons? I would assume neocons are
Zionists and but why do they need to go in that direction that far against
China? Yeah, Laura Loomer is someone who bas who's sort of a I mean you you could
call her a private intelligence figure, but it's not really intelligence that
she's producing. It's more like misinformation and muddying the waters
and smearing on behalf of her clients who include
Israeli cutouts. Anna Paulina Luna, whose real name is Anna Paulina
Meerhoffer and had a career in the let's
say entertainment industry before she was in Congress is also a subject of
major Israeli influence. And what they're simply trying to do is shift the
discussion to an official adversary based on pure conjecture. I mean, Laura
Loomer at the same time is been for weeks she's been promoting this
fear-mongering narrative about an imminent al-Qaeda attack inside US cities. So, everything
that she's trying to do is trying to distract us and deflect from the reality that's staring us in the face. And she
also before Charlie Kirk was killed was heavily attacking him. I mean, she was one of the first people to launch the
attack on Charlie Kirk from the right. That's accusing him of speaking out of both sides of his mouth, of being uh,
you know, on the one hand pro-Israel and at on the other hand hosting Tucker
Carlson and hosting, you know, anti-ionist figures like Dave Smith at his events.
And so, Laura Loomer can't really seem to get her story straight, but who is she speaking for here? I mean, it looks
like right in in this case, she's speaking on Netanyahu's behalf and trying to get Americans or people in the
MAGA world to blame China. And I don't know what she's referring to, what she could possibly be referring to, or where
the evidence is, but it just doesn't stand to reason that China would have any role in this. I mean, Israel was
heavily invested in the career and life of Charlie Kirk. What did China have to
do with any of this? Yeah, yesterday was the anniversary of October
the 7th. You know, the the day that Hamas attack Israel and in the aftermath
of that day, everything has changed in Gaza. Gaza is devastated, destroyed by
Israeli attack. and looking at what has happened Max and
what's going on in the United States because th these people who are against the policies in the Middle East these
are not the farleft progressive people Democratic party and these are to the to
the right side of the Republicans you know like Steve Bannon he's talking he
came out and talk about the case of the Middle East the war against Iran the reality of October the 7th. Before going
to your comment, here is what Steve Bannon said on his podcast.
Netanyahu have to trumped up, totally trumped up, bald-faced lie about the
Persians. They had greater strategic ambitions and they didn't care if they sucked the United States into a 20 or
30-year war. Those days are over. President Trump has asserted himself that, hey, you are a protected. What did
say? He's given orders, right? He's given orders the way it should be. If
they want to go do it on their own, hey, God bless you. Go. Go for it. But do not suck us in. We're not in for this.
It's outrageous what has happened over the last couple years. And we still don't have an investigation on October
7th. And believe me, if the hands were clean of Netanyahu, you would had an investigation and been out in 30 days.
Write that down with your number two principle because that that's going to come and you're going to be shocked by
it. There's no way that just kind of happened.
You know what's important about Steve Bannon that he's reaching the sort of audience that the left and the
progressive cannot reach and that's important for the for Israelis. your
take on that? Well, Steve Bannon's been pushed out. I mean, he was pushed out first by Elon
Musk. Um, he is no longer chief of
staff. He's sort of in the wilderness trying to wage this America first fight
and he's become hostile to he was he was this was a longtime supporter of Israel.
Steve Bannon was one of the founders of Breitbart with Andrew Breitbart, which
was founded actually out of a meeting in Jerusalem with Benjamin Netanyahu, who
seemingly promised money from his cabal of millionaires inside the United States
for a new set of online conservative magazines. One of them was Gateway Pundit. Another one is Breitbart. And
Steve Bannon pro proudly declared that Breitbart under his watch after Andrew
Breitbart's untimely death was the most pro-Israel
magazine in America. And now you can see the shift. He refers to Israel as a
protectorate. He can see finally now that he's out of the administration or maybe based on what he saw inside the
administration that Israel's interests are not aligned with the US. In fact,
they contravene the US and that Israel as the ultimate frennemy has more power to harm US strategic interests than an a
supposed adversary. Steve Bannon is in the anti-China camp and he believes that
Israel is dragging the US into a multi-generational devastating conflict with Iran that is
draining its stockpiles of THAD missiles which would have been given to Taiwan
and other Indo-Pacific vassel states that are supposed to wage the frontline war against China. And so
Steve Bannon from an imperialist perspective sees Israel as an um an
obstacle if not a parasitic force that is just draining the lifeblood of the US
military and US empire. And another figure in the the camp, the Israel
critical camp that is incipient on the America first right is Matt Gates who
hosted me on his show on one American news about Charlie Kirk in Israel. And
Matt Gates was just on an an episode of Tim P where he was
reflecting on his time in Congress and going to Apac before he sort of had an
awakening. And he said that every member of Congress would wear a QR code and Apac members could simply take a photo
of the QR code or scan the QR code with their phones in order to donate to that
member of Congress. Um, imagine how alienating that is to be treated like
you're almost at some kind of slave auction surrounded by these donors representing
a foreign state. So the alienation continues to grow. It was the same
alienation Charlie Kirk felt in his last days and last moments as he was basically being besieged by Netanyahu's
cutouts. It's the same alienation that was exuded by Tucker Carlson in his last
mono, I think a historic mono, when he just raised the question that many of us
who started to question this relationship many years ago, especially on the left, asked, which is,
how is this tiny little country able to dominate and influence an unparalleled
global superpower? How does that even make sense? and how is that good for
this country? And he he went on for 20 more minutes about
that before bringing on Jeffrey Saxs, someone I don't know if you've hosted him, but you know, is he's making the
anti-Imperial geopolitical circuit uh even more electrifying than it currently
is?

Max, do you think that after all are we going to find out what has happened on October the 7th?

Well, I mean, I think we know more or less what happened, and that we have circumstantial evidence, or I don't want to call it evidence even, but there are various incidents that make many people, particularly in the west who haven't been on the ground in the southern Gaza envelope in Israel, or in the Gaza Strip itself, aren't really familiar with the resistance, and who consider Israel to be this omnipotent force with an all-seeing eye, that makes them believe that it was sort of an inside job, and that Israel not only supported Hamas secretly, but let it happen. And certainly there is evidence that Israel has benefited in certain ways from October 7th. But all we have is these circumstantial pieces of evidence. For example, members of the Givati brigade not entering a kibbutz on time, the female spotters in the Gaza division detecting unusual activity, and then the command back at Hakiraa and Tel Aviv not responding immediately. Intelligence warnings beforehand, but this is always underway. And for years and years, Israel has been detecting unusual activity, and warning of some kind of attack. But it's pretty clear to me that the Israeli intelligence services and military heavily underestimated the capacity of the Alcasam brigades, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and that they were outsmarted on that day by Mohammed Sinwar, someone who was in Israeli prisons for 25 years, spoke fluent Hebrew, understood Israel's societal weaknesses, had a theory of change based on the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap, which he negotiated personally from prison, negotiated his own release, and he understood how to evade Israel's collaborator network in Gaza. Because why was he in prison for 25 years? Because he was in charge of counter espionage on behalf of the early phases of Alcasam, and had killed Palestinian spies for Israel inside Gaza. So he was perfectly positioned to orchestrate this operation. Israel was prepared for a tunnel attack, and what did the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades do? They simply went through a fence, and pounced on extremely lazy conscripts: the female spotters, and their sleeping male guards at military bases.

During their years of military service, they say they’ve grown accustomed to the fact that they “don’t count.” Nor was any notice given to the repeated warnings they raised before Hamas’ infiltration on Black Saturday. Warnings that, it seems to them, were going in one IDF earpiece and out the other.

These included reports about Hamas’ preparations near the border fence, its drone activity in recent months, its efforts to knock out cameras, the extensive use of vans and motorcycles, and even rehearsals for the shelling of tanks.

The spotters believe Hamas was actually being rather negligent: it didn’t try to hide anything and its actions were out in the open....



In some ways, the hours leading up to the morning of October 7 were quite ordinary. Noga, a spotter stationed at the IDF’s intelligence unit at Kissufim, close to the Gaza border, spotted an unfamiliar, suspicious-looking man standing in front of one of the barrier gates erected along the Gaza Strip border.

Her report reached Lt. Col. Meir Ohayon, commander of the 51st Battalion in the Golani Brigade, who at 3 A.M. made his way to the location and, after sighting the man, fired tear gas at him. The suspect turned back and went to a Hamas observation post about 300 meters (nearly 1,000 feet) from the fence, which is the distance at which Palestinians are allowed to stay. The spotter observed several other people at the same position, and it seemed to her that a briefing was being held there.

All of the above seemed unusual and disturbing to her, so she shared her feelings with the other spotters as well as the on-duty commander. However, at the end of a discussion that lasted about a minute in the operations room and in consultation with the division, it was decided to return to normal.

“I’m sorry I had to wake you at this hour,” the spotter apologized to Ohayon, “but I still think there’s something strange here.”...

While she had been trying to understand who the suspicious figure was and what he was up to, the IDF and Shin Bet security service had already held discussions following a warning about a terrorist infiltration. It was serious enough for the senior officials to decide (on the Friday evening) to increase the presence of special forces in the south, sending a specialist team trained to deal with terror squads.

Another team from the Shin Bet operational unit and a force from the commando unit were also placed on alert. An elite IDF team from Sayeret Matkal was also dispatched to the area. However, no one in the Southern Command or its Gaza Division bothered to inform the dozens of young women serving as spotters at the Kissufim and Nahal Oz army bases of that. This did not even change at 4 A.M., when it was decided to put the Gaza border communities themselves on alert for fear of possible infiltration....

At around 6:30 A.M., Noga still found time to report about the “infiltration” protocol for communities and military bases, all while hearing the gunfire and shouting of the terrorists outside the command center where she was stationed.

In the spotters’ WhatsApp group, friends from Nahal Oz were already reporting that terrorists were everywhere, that people had been killed and kidnapped, and that there was nowhere to run. At 7:17 A.M., the last message was received in the group, signed by spotters from Nahal Oz: “Tell everyone that we love them and thanks for everything.”...

They can pinpoint seemingly pivotal incidents going back months. For instance, Talia, who has served as a spotter in the Gaza Division for about 18 months and is therefore considered something of a veteran, recounts: “A month before the war, I was sitting in the command center in Kissufim and at around 7 A.M. dozens of cars and vans arrived in the area I’m responsible for, near one of Hamas’ observation towers. After a few minutes, a luxury car stopped next to them – the type of car very few people in Gaza have, so definitely Hamas.”

“I didn’t recognize all of them, but it was clear to me that these men were from Nukhba [Hamas’ special forces], because some of them had ski masks over their faces so as not to be identified. They left there for a briefing that lasted a long time, 30 to 40 minutes, with binoculars, pointing to the Israeli side.”

Talia says she wanted to try to identify the men and see what was in their vehicles – so she pointed the cameras to one of the senior people there and zoomed in.

“He gestured to me, wagging his finger – ‘nu, nu, nu,’” she recounts, admitting her shock because the camera was located on a high pole at a great distance from where the group was standing, but he knew exactly where it was.

At that stage, she called in her commander. I told her they can see me, that he’s talking to me through the camera,” she recalls. “She also saw this and didn’t know how to react to it.”

After the Gazans left, Talia says she received a report from a more northerly lookout post that the same group had returned and was stopping in different spots along the length of the Gaza Strip.

For Talia and the other spotters on duty that day, this looked like a briefing prior to an operation against Israel – and they acted accordingly.

“We flagged the event, we reported that it was unusual and that they could see us,” she recalls. “We reported that it was a briefing by senior [Hamas] officials who we could not recognize. But until today, it’s not clear what [the IDF] did with that information.”

She says her commanders also tried to pass this information up the chain of command. However, as relatively low-ranking officers, these women “are just as helpless as we are before the senior commanders – and certainly before the division and regional command,” Talia says. “Nobody really pays any attention to us....

This was also the case when Hamas drones started flying regularly in their sector.

“In the past couple of months, they began to put up drones every day, sometimes twice a day, that came really close to the border,” says another spotter, Ilana. “Up to 300 meters from the fence – sometimes less than that. A month and a half before the war, we saw that in one of Hamas’ training camps, they had built an exact replica of an armed observation post, just like the ones we have. They started to train there with drones, to hit the observation post.”

Ilana recounts how they passed this information on according to protocol, but even went beyond that: “We yelled at our commanders that they have to take us more seriously, that something bad is happening here. We understood that the behavior in the field was very strange, that they were basically training for an attack against us. Until now, nobody has come and told us what was done with this information.”

And then on Black Saturday, when they saw the drones blowing up their observation posts one after the other, the spotters knew where this was headed. “We knew from the moment the attack began: this was exactly what was happening in the last month and a half of their training,” Ilana says....

“In the last year, they started to remove pieces of iron from the fence,” says Adi, citing an example of what was written in another report that might be buried in some drawer somewhere. And there’s more.

“In my sector, they built a precise model of a Merkava IV tank and trained on it all the time,” says another spotter from the Gaza Division. “They trained on how to hit a tank with an RPG, where exactly to hit it and then, in front of our eyes, they trained on how to capture the tank crew.”

She says the spotters tried warning that these training exercises were actually increasing in intensity, “that there were more people taking part, and that they were being done with additional Hamas units coming in from other areas.”

They also noticed that vans and motorcycles were frequently being used in the training. And when protests started taking place by the border [in the months prior to the attack], they observed that “there are Hamas operatives who are constantly examining the places where we are less effective with the cameras. They really planned everything down to the smallest detail. Anyone who says today that it was unavoidable or that it was impossible to know – that’s a lie.”...

“They knew much more about us than we thought,” says another spotter, Liat. “Today I know, and my friends are also sure of it, that they studied us in depth. Not just where we were sitting and observing from. They did an insane job.”...

Hamas didn’t do this under the radar....

In April, Smadar sat at the lookout post in Kissufim and noticed something new at one of Hamas’ training camps. “They had built a precise model of the border area,“ she says. “They trained there on how to break through the fence. Contrary to what the IDF thought, their training was for infiltration on the ground, not from tunnels. As time passed, their training became more intensive.”

About a month and a half before the attack, that training apparently shifted up a gear.

“We started to see them getting 300 meters from the fence, and their trainers stood with stopwatches and measured how much time it took them to run to the fence, to reach it, and to return to their positions. We knew there was something [happening],” says Liat. According to her, even though disturbances were also taking place near the fence, “the forces we sent did practically nothing – even the warning shots stopped. Combat soldiers would arrive, fire tear gas and leave.”

A month before the war, there was an apparent change of approach among some spotters: A senior officer from the Gaza Division came to the operations room on one of the bases along the Gaza border in order to talk about the sector, so one of the spotters decided to tell him exactly what was on her mind.

“I told him there was going to be a war and we’re simply not ready,” she says, recalling the conversation. “That what’s happening with Hamas along the border fence is not normal. That they’re mocking the IDF, that our hands are tied and we’re not even [firing] warning shots.”

The response of the senior officer was to ask for her name, to regard her with admonishing eyes and to “put her in her place” for having the temerity to address him directly rather than going through the proper channels.

“He said to me, ‘I’ve been in the sector since 2010. I was a commander here, an intelligence officer, I know Gaza inside-out, and I’m telling you that everything’s fine. You’re here only six months and I’ve been here 12 years. I know the sector like the back of my hand.”

Someone who has known the sector for less time – but still in depth – is Einat, a spotter from Nahal Oz. That Saturday, she was at home (“in the safe room with the family”), but recognized immediately what was about to happen.

“As soon as I understood that there was such a large infiltration, I told [my family]: ‘There’s a Hamas raid, they’ll kidnap soldiers and charge into the residential communities.’ I even told them there was no way they weren’t coming with paragliders. They looked at me like I was crazy. I started shouting that we knew there would be something and no one would listen to us.”

-- The Women Soldiers Who Warned of a Pending Hamas Attack – and Were Ignored: Over the past year, the Israel Defense Forces’ spotters situated on the Gaza border, all women, warned that something unusual was happening. Those who survived the October 7 massacre are convinced that if it had been men sounding the alarm, things would look different today, by Yaniv Kubovich, Haaretz, Nov 20, 2023

And after knocking out the military bases, were easily able to enter the kibbutzim, and take large amounts of captives. And by the time Apache helicopters were in the air, and tanks were on the ground, they were given orders to enact the Hannibal directive, which I think is the real scandal of the day. How many Israeli civilians were killed by the Israeli military? And we're now learning that on Zikim Beach, which is the closest beach to Gaza, at around 6:00 a.m. when Kasam militants arrived in a rubber boat and began an attack on the Zakim naval base, something that, by the way, Hamas has attacked before -- a frogman team was able to attack the Zakim naval base in 2014 so this isn't unprecedented -- at that point, an Israeli naval boat began opening fire on the entire beach, and slaughtered possibly dozens of Israeli beachgoers. This is newly released material. Much of that massacre appears to have been recorded by the victims on their phones, and by a couple of survivors. And the Israeli military has wiped their phones clean, and will not release the footage, as they go around the world trying to show every influential person their curated version of what took place on October 7th. I think it's possible hundreds of Israeli citizens were killed by the Israeli military on that day. And that complements the 350 or so Israeli soldiers, active duty combatants, who were killed by Hamas militants on that day.

Just before wrapping up, Max, we know that CBS News has a new head, Bari Weiss, and on her first expose since becoming the head of CBS News, she launched a campaign to defend Van Jones, and you've mentioned what has happened with him.

Let me see that. That's amazing.

Yeah, when you look at who Bari Weiss is, and what she is trying to do for Israel, and how capable these people could be in terms of the public opinion and the changes that they want to cause in the United States.

Yeah. I just think I think they'll produce more polarization and alienation. But no one watches CBS News. And what they're seeking to do is prevent legacy media from shifting away from the traditional pro-Israel line, and at least showing the humanitarian situation in Gaza. They've neutralized a major media asset. And then what they'll do is they'll use the brand of this asset that's still trusted by people over 50 or 60 in the United States, to legitimize the Likudnik pro-Israel narrative on certain issues.

But there's a deeper issue here. Let me first cover the Israel angle.

For those who don't know, CBS News was acquired through the sale of Paramount to a company called Sky Dance, which is owned by David Ellison. David Ellison is the son of Larry Ellison, who is a billionaire data merchant who owns Oracle, a CIA contractor. And Larry Ellison is a died-in-the-wool Jewish Zionist who is close to Benjamin Netanyahu, has hosted him on his private island, is on the board of Friends of the IDF, and his son, as we reported at the Grey Zone, sourcing reporting from Jack Paulson another journalist, was actually involved in a plan called 12 tribes, where the Israeli government, back in 2015, was recruiting 12 Zionist billionaires in the US to fund spying and sabotage activities against Palestine solidarity activism in the US. So that's who the CBS owner is, a guy who effectively is operating as an Israeli spy. So Israel bought this.

Israel has essentially bought Tik Tok as well. Larry Ellison fronted that sale. He's providing the infrastructure, and then the money came from Andreessen Horowitz. Marc Andreessen, venture capitalist, is a backer of Bari Weiss, and is also involved in drone technology. And his partner is Ben Horowitz, who's the son of one of the most prolific, and disgusting, anti-Palestinian agitators in US history, David Horowitz, who was actually an early mentor to Charlie Kirk.

So they want to buy social media. I think that's more important. They take social media off the table, and everyone's getting banned on Tik Tok for even mentioning Aipac. Now we're on the verge of being banned at The GrayZone. It's over. Netanyahu has called for Tik Tok to be bought. That's the bigger sort of threat to our ability to express ourselves and actually have a debate.

But Bari Weiss has been installed at CBS by David Ellison. And Bari Weiss is 41 years old. Her whole career has been dedicated to advancing the cause of Israel, and she's burrowed herself within the sort of anti-woke center-right movement, positioning herself as a voice of common sense against, you know, trans women being allowed in girls' locker rooms, and at the end of the whole COVID hysteria she suddenly as she was calling for everyone to get vaccinated, she suddenly decided to come out as an opponent of the lockdowns, after it became obvious that it was a disaster.

And she's positioning CBS News through her newsletter, the Free Press. So basically, after leaving the New York Times, claiming it was, you know, a liberal-infested hive of the woke mind virus, she had this comeback through a publication called Free Press. And that has been the vehicle for installing her at CBS. David Ellison bought the Free Press for $150 million. That was its valuation. And she falsely claimed that she had 1.5 million subscribers. Almost none of them are paid subscribers. And anyone watching this, compare the YouTube viewership of Dialogue Works, or The Grayzone, and we're heavily suppressed on YouTube to that of the Free Press. No one's watching the Free Press. None of their videos go viral. They're boring. And if you look at their studios, compared to my studio, or Nima's studio, their studios are elaborate. It's like this inviting living room, with neon signs, and expensive leather chairs, and Persian rugs. We can't afford that. So who's backing the Free Press?

This goes a little bit beyond Israel, but it's a tie-in to Israel. The Free Press is backed by Palantir co-founder Joe Lansdale. I believe other Palantir co-founders, like Alex Karp are involved, and Marc Andreessen, who I mentioned before. These are like the tech AI warlords that are taking over our country. And David Sachs, who is a tech billionaire who has a White House position now. He's the sort of Czar of AI and crypto policy, and he's steering crypto in favor of Trump who's doing all these memecoin rug pulls. This is corrupt in itself.

But Bari Weiss maintains control over the Free Press, and she's at CBS. And it looks like figures like David Sachs, who are in the White House, made money off the sale of the Free Press, because they were investors. So basically her installation at CBS is benefiting a class of AI warlords who are all ultra-Zionists, in violation of CBS's own ethics code, which is published on its website. And she's out there thanking them all. "Thank you Joe Lansdale."

They also created a fake university for Bari Weiss in Austin, the capital of Texas. And she has a bust of herself in the entrance. And Joe Lansdale, Palantir co-founder, is the chairman of this fake university. So at CBS, she is going to likely promote the interests of the tech warlords, including one in the White House, who made money off of her career. She basically owes it to them.

So what we're witnessing is not just sort of an Israeli takeover of a major legacy media asset, but a corruption scandal about financial and political conflicts of interest, which CBS, and the rest of the media, refuses to address. Because if you look at the way that mainstream US media is treating this, they're not saying anything about the corruption, and the conflicts of interest. And they're burying the Israel angle. That's where we're at, and that's why people are are turning away from corporate media, and watching Dialogue Works and The GrayZone, because they can see through it.

Yeah. Thank you so much, Max. Great pleasure as always.

Thanks very much, Nima. Good seeing you.

See you soon.  

Bye-bye.

[admin]

[admin]

Trump HUMILIATED In Front of ENTIRE WORLD as ICE PLANS IMPLODE
Katie Phang
Oct 9, 2025

Till Eckert, a German investigative journalist, witnessed firsthand the violent assault of an Ecuadorian woman by an ICE agent in the halls of the NYC immigration courthouse. He joins Katie Phang to talk about what he’s seen



Transcript

Just a few weeks ago, German
investigative journalist Till Eert here
in the United States on a special
fellowship exchange witnessed firsthand
the violence at the hands of the Trump
administration's immigration draconian
immigration crackdown. He was at that
New York immigration courthouse in the
hallway with a young Ecuadorian woman
who was violently assaulted and shoved
to the ground by an ICE agent. He
captured it on video and he wrote about
it for ProPublica.
Till Eert and I had the chance to sit
down to talk about his observations as
somebody who lives in Germany and is
witnessing what is happening in the
United States. He says he's alarmed and
I don't blame him. We talk about what
happened to that woman, Monica, that day
and why it's so important to be focusing
on how this is going on and and why this
is happening. And joining me now from
Berlin, we are so grateful for his time
is investigative journalist Till Eert.
Till, it's so nice to see you. How are
you doing?
Doing good. Hi Katie.
Hi Till. So thanks again. Like I like I
noted you are in Berlin. You came to the
United States, spent a few months here
as a part of your investigative
journalism. Get the viewers kind of
caught up quickly on what was the
purpose for you coming to the US.
Sure. Um, I was part of uh an fellowship
program. It was like more an exchange
program between journalists. It's an
international trans uh Atlantic exchange
program where 10 German journalists
would get sent to the US and 10 US
journalists would get sent to Germany.
It's called the R4F Burns Fellowship.
and I had the pleasure to uh be hosted
by ProPublica,
which is by the way for everybody who
tunes into my channel till I am a huge
fan of ProPublica. I am always saying to
people to not only subscribe but to
follow because their pieces are truly
tip of spear when it comes to
investigative journalism. So that was
part of the reason why I noted your
article from September 25th. Um, before
I get into that though, I wanted to ask
kind of what were your expectations
before you came to the US? Seeing how
you are in journalism, you are totally
up to speed on kind of global politics
and everything that's going on. What
were your expectations as to what you
thought it was going to be like when you
came here?
Well, I've been kind of alarmed to be
frankly honest with you um because of
the pictures I have seen like of masked
agents uh sweeping people off the
streets. So, I was just wondering and I
was curious to see it with my own eyes
and witnessing what was going on here in
the in the states.
And that was a huge part of that piece
you did for ProPublica.
You spent time reporting on the
immigrant neighborhoods and you went to
emergency rooms, churches, ICE field
offices, and then you spent two weeks
every day going to the federal
immigration courthouse in Manhattan. And
on that morning, this is something that
you caught yourself on video. We're
going to play it right now. And it's two
clips back to back we're going to play.
So, let's take a watch and a listen.
[Applause]
[Music]
till that was really hard to watch. Um,
that woman uh just shoved to the ground,
slamming her head on the floor. Her name
is Monica Moreta Galarsa. And for those
of us that don't speak Spanish and
didn't understand, in that second video,
she was explaining that she had come to
the United States from Ecuador and that
people were routinely beat in her home
country of Ecuador and she didn't think
that she'd come to the US and the same
thing would happen to her till we've
seen these videos. Now, talk about what
it was like to witness it firsthand and
and kind of what happened that day.
Yeah. So that morning, it must have been
like 10:00 a.m. Um I was walking into
the building and then driving up with
the elevator to um floor 12 um with
another photographer um another
journalist colleague. Um and we've been
hearing as soon as we were walking out
of the elevator, we were hearing those
distressed like this screams of Monica
um around the corner. So, we were like
walking out of the elevator around the
corner and have seen what we are what we
just saw in the video um like um right
before like the stairwell. Well, usually
like um ice agents would bring um
immigrants down to another floor. And
apparently this had just happened to
Monica's husband and this was why Monica
was very upset. And uh we can also see
in this video her children were there.
Um, we would hear I would see and hear
the children screaming. Um, Monica
screaming of of course being upset like
speaking Spanish to the Ice Age and
asking him uh whether she's allowed to
come in with him. She's afraid that he
will get hurt and
that was um it was um quite
it was quite a shocking thing to see. Um
it was an escalation for sure. Um, I
could feel the tension
um in this hallways rising like the days
before. Um,
every time when when an arrest happens
short before, you could you can tell
that ICE agents are getting nervous like
they're tipping from one foot to the
other to the other like you could you
could just feel that there is tensions
rising and um so that was like a
culmination and escalation for sure.
Well, there was one ICE agent in
particular, and it definitely was a big
scuffle, right? But there was that one
man in particular. He's been identified
by a first name of Vincent. We don't
know his full name, but he's the one
who's shoving her to the ground, and
he's also the one who was mocking her.
We could hear him on the video saying,
"Adios. Adios to her, maybe even to her
husband." You know, till you mentioned
her children were there. They were so
little and they were witnessing all of
this. Not only their father getting
arrested, but now their mother being
slammed to the ground.
That's correct. Like first correction uh
beforehand little correction like the
agent's name as we heard it is Victor
although we cannot be cannot be sure if
this is his real name.
Okay.
But yeah so children were there. They
were witnessing um their father taken
away by masked men. Well those are
children. They don't know what is
happening. They're just seeing like
masked men taking their father away. Um
and then of course Victor as you just
said um yelling at Monica um adios and
as I'm hearing in the video and as I
understood like one time he also said
calles which means something like shut
up um if I'm not mistaken um that was
like right in the moment when he was uh
standing
like over her above her like and having
his finger so the children were also
they also had to witness is their mom
getting
slammed to the ground
and then she had to go to the hospital.
You went with her to the hospital. That
was a part of that second clip where she
was crying and saying that she didn't
expect to get beaten in the United
States when that was something that was
a regular occurrence in Ecuador, her
home country.
That's right. Um, so photographers and
court observers were taking Monica out
outside um of the a federal plaza right
away and were been calling like um a
priest from a local church who was then
rushing um to us. Um and he was taking
Monica first to Congressman Dan Goldman
who then was watching the videos did a
comment on that too. Um and then
afterwards to the hospital where Monica
got their got her checkups like um she
was apparently seeing a neurologist.
Um and um she was I guess like released
like two hours or two and a half hours
later. Um and yeah, we was we were we
were there all the time.
Till I got to ask you, you were there
for two weeks in a row every day, right?
looking and being a part of the energy
as you spoke of in the hallways at this
immigration courthouse. So these are
people that are voluntarily appearing in
court. They are doing a process that for
all intents and purposes is the quote
legal process, right, to be able to
either get asylum or temporary protected
status or citizenship or some way or
means to be there.
Explain to our viewers what it felt
like. I know you were there in a
professional capacity, but talk about
what it felt like just as a human
knowing that these people are going,
knowing that there's the very real
possibility they could just be taken
into custody, whisked away, and never
see their family again, but that they
were there.
Yeah. Well, there's there's no way you
can you can watch that and just be be
left stone cold. Um that's that's not a
possibility. I mean, as you say, like
the people are going there, they're
playing by the rules. there are um they
will go there to have their regular
check-ins or their asylum case hearings.
Um sometimes it it would be something
about a marriage license or something
like that. And um they are expecting due
process and uh basic humanitarian
protection too. Like this is what would
what you would expect when you are going
to a court. And to then walk in and to
have to cross like sometimes 10 15
sometimes we saw 20 masked agents lining
up like on this hallway like you have to
cross and walk walk through them into
the courtroom. That alone I've seen many
people being
so distressed and so um afraid. So,
some of the arrests I've seen, um, I
could I was I looked into the people's
faces and I could see how
shocked and paralyzed they were. They
were just not understanding what was
going on to them, right? Like they were
they thought like they're doing
everything right. Um, some people, um, I
guess even Monica said they thought
these people are there to protect them.
They're there for their protection. Um,
for some it turns out to be Yeah. the
the opposite, right?
And you're there and you are there again
in a professional capacity. Um, but
you're watching this. Was it even scary
for you to kind of see this happening?
Did you worry at all for yourself while
you're in this? I mean, it it it gets
pretty chaotic when they're when they're
taking people into custody.
Well, it's a delicate uh situation for
sure. Um we have seen a colleague of
ours like just a couple of days later um
Turkish journalist um who got um shoved
to the ground as well by an ice agent.
It was just a couple of days later um
for just trying to follow the agents
into the elevator doing um making some
making photographs, pictures, document
what's going on. So for sure I knew from
the get-go that this is a delicate
situation and I would have to be pretty
careful about like where I'm standing,
what I'm doing, how I behave, how I
talk. And so for me, I guess um the
um I was not going there with a camera.
So that was just me. It was me with my
just I was I was there just like trying
to observe the scene.
Sometimes the phone of course like this
video I just flipped out the phone and
shot the video. Uh for sure if if
something like that would happen. But uh
other than that I was just standing
there and trying to observe. I was like
there were times where I would go like
inside of the courtrooms as well which
is something um journalists with cameras
are not allowed to um but that was the
reason I was not taking like any cameras
with me. So, I knew it's I I need to be
I need to be careful because um you
could you could easily get caught up in
in the chaos and sometimes you see those
arrests and those detains that are like
quite
they're they're swift but they're also
there's like sometimes people would
stand in the way and they would get
shafted away and then um it certainly
can create like a like a dangerous
situation. And so I was like for sure
making sure to not be in their way.
Your thoughts about hearing that that
ICE agent was initially there was a
declaration that that wasn't behavior.
ICE made a declaration publicly. This is
not behavior we condone. You know it
doesn't meet with our professional
standards. And then about three day
three days later CBS News reporting that
that ICE officer was placed back on duty
after preliminary review of that
incident.
Yeah. uh that made the rounds uh quite
quite quickly um with us like the people
who were going there quite frequently.
Um we were trying to verify that on the
ground with um security personnel uh who
were then telling us apparently he's
reinstated. Apparently he's on another
floor or another side. So we we could
not be completely sure like I mean Katie
um in the beginning we were not sure
like what what does it mean like be
relieved of duties? Like we we tried to
follow up with DHS like what exactly
does that mean? Like can you specify is
he fired? Is he taking off the streets?
What does it mean? DHS did not get back
to us for a command and they did not
until now. like we've I've been just
this morning hearing that he was seen um
in Federal Plaza by a photographer, but
again I cannot verify it. I'm trying to
um get um get a comment on that from
DHS, but they were not responding on
that. But yeah, it's uh the agent
he was um
let's say it's not the first time the
agent raised eyebrows. um with um court
observers and other photographers. So,
some of them were not really surprised
that something like that would happen.
Um
so, yeah. Um apparently he's back, but
we cannot know for sure.
There was an article in ProPublica on
July 31st that talked about nearly 50
documented instances of immigration
agents breaking vehicle windows. And
we've seen it on social media, right,
and on the news till we've seen the
violent entries into people's cars to be
able to drag people out. This is
happening on American streets. And it's
interesting because the article spoke
that officers who are breaking the
glass, they're not actually being
disciplined. They're getting promoted.
Like they're getting rewarded for this
type of behavior like Victor exhibited
with Monica and and other things that
were quote eyebrow raising as you've
noticed. You mentioned a few minutes ago
too, Till part of what you did here
coming from Berlin. You're an
investigative journalist. You were
alarmed by what you've been hearing and
seeing have been the tactics by
immigration here in the United States.
There have been comparisons till to
Germany, but Nazi Germany, right? The
idea of having stormtroopers and people
in the streets taking people into
custody, rounding them up, this type of
kind of crackdown on opposition. Do you
think those are fair comparisons, Till?
Well, I think um I think it's always
hard to draw like direct direct
comparisons between what happened back
then in Germany and what happens right
now in the US. But I'm I think it's sure
to compare dynamics and functionalities
um behaviors
um of the authorities. Um, I think this
is a fair game to do. And um, for sure I
do understand why for many people
masked um, federal agents on the street
um, arrest like in unmarked vehicles um,
coming and arresting people um, or in
this courthouse um, could could lead to
very unpleasant associations. So I
understand that. Till, I also wanted to
ask you as just a person. Um, I think it
kind of doesn't get discussed often. Um,
I call myself an independent journalist
because I'm not affiliated with um, a
media company, right? It's hard for us
to be covering this day in and day out.
It's hard for us to witness it to you
literally kind of went through that
firsthand experience with Monica in that
hallway.
Talk about the toll it takes on
journalists. Um, it's it's a lot to to
to hear it and to feel it and to and to
be a part of that energy and to have to
listen to the stories and to watch the
tears and to see these families ripped
apart.
You got to make sure you are uh you look
after yourself as a journalist too. It's
very important, right? Um, I mean it's a
job where you would constantly,
especially as an investigative reporter,
you would be constantly um confronted
with like um
individual stories or sometimes systemic
um abuse that is power power abuse which
is just very hard to to bear. Um so you
got to take care of yourself. Uh it's a
very important thing that meaning um for
me that means uh
just try to eat well right like try to
sleep well try to to get your workout in
try to um so those are those are
important things so I guess like those
are the basics and whenever you need um
someone to talk to it's it's also quite
important to do that um fortunately in
the newsrooms I've been working with
like ProPublica in the but also correct
teeth here in Germany. Um, all of the
co-workers will always have an open ear
um and would always like take their time
to to to go and talk to you for a check
in. So, um, yeah, that's it's not it's
not easy, of course, but I guess it's
it's our job to to look very closely and
to document it and um, but yeah, in the
same time take care of ourselves. Before
you and I part ways, I wanted to ask you
kind of quickly about an article that
you bylinined with others for Corctif,
which is also an amazing investigative
newsroom. I was really impressed with
the the articles I was able to read. You
did an article in January of this year
about Russian meddling in Germany's
elections. And what I loved about
reading it till was I was stunned. you
um and your and your colleagues uh
uncovered a Russian influence operation,
a disinformation campaign that
established a 100 fake websites ahead of
Germany's general election earlier this
year. The purpose to influence the
election campaign through the spreading
of disinformation
um with the help of AI and then having
right-wing influencers kind of spreading
it. The article is fantastic and I'm
going to tag it so people can read it,
but it it was fake news stories
published on websites that were spread
by pro-Russian influencers in Germany.
And one of the kind of like main
interfering entities was Storm 1516,
which targeted our US presidential
elections in no in 2024 with the goal
apparently of getting Donald Trump into
office. People like JD Vance and
Marjorie Taylor Green have spread Storm
1516's narratives. I mean, till it's
terrifying and yet remarkably almost
like um validating to hear your
investigative journalism to prove that
we've known that Russians have been
meddling in these elections, but I
didn't know that you were meddling in
German elections.
Yeah, we've been uh following this for
quite some time. Um there are many um
many hints and clues that like Russia uh
not only tries to meddle with like
elections but also tries to like provoke
um
Europe and Germany in particularly for a
long time. I'm sure you've been hearing
like the stories about the drones
um um above um above Germany. I mean
like above Poland. We have seen we have
seen those news. So this is something
that has been going on for for quite
some time now. So yeah, it's it's quite
real. We're following it for for quite
some time now.
Well, Till Eert, look, I I lauded you
for your hard work. I'm grateful that
this fellowship program allowed you to
spend time here in the United States. I
hope that there was something good that
you got out of it. We got obviously your
incredible work as an investigative
journalist. Correct. Teeth is is is
lucky to have you working there. And
again, we're also grateful for
ProPublica having you be a part of their
newsroom when you were here in the
United States. Thanks, Till Eert, for
joining me today. I really appreciate
it.
Thanks so much for having me, Katie.
Katie Fang here. We launched the Katie
Fang News Channel in partnership with
the Midas Touch Network so we could
bring you the latest in legal and
political news. Straight, no chaser. So,
if you're a fellow trutht teller, hit
that subscribe button and share the word
about this channel so we can build a
highinformation America

[admin]

Photographer Captures Pam Bondi’s Notes—and They’re a Doozy. Attorney General Pam Bondi came to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing armed with nothing more than lame canned attacks.
by Edith Olmsted
newrepublic.com
October 8, 2025/10:37 a.m. ET
https://newrepublic.com/post/201475/pho ... ring-notes

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi needed a cheat sheet of attacks to dodge Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s tough questions.

While sitting before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, Bondi repeatedly refused to answer questions from the Rhode Island Democrat about what happened to the $50,000 cash bribe border czar Tom Homan received from undercover FBI agents in 2024.

Reuters photographer Jonathan Ernst captured an image of the inside of a folder of notes Bondi referred to during questioning by Whitehouse. But her notes had nothing to do with her work as leader of the Department of Justice, or even the embattled border czar. Rather, Bondi had collected screenshots of social media posts, prewritten comebacks, and handwritten notes she hoped could give her a good “gotcha” moment.

The top of the folder showed a July X post from Whitehouse in which he’d called for an investigation into Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. “No government official should be above the law,” he wrote.

Also included in the folder was a bulleted list of comebacks. Apparently, Bondi needed to prepare the remark “You are a total hypocrite” in advance.

[x]
Molly Ploofkins
@Mollyploofkins
Zoomed-in photo of Attorney General Pam Bondi's notes while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 7, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

She employed another one of her prewritten attacks when asked about Homan’s tax returns. “Senator, I would be more concerned if I were you when you talk about corruption and money, when you pushed for legislation that subsidized your wife’s company!” Bondi sneered.

“The questions here are actually pretty specific,” Whitehouse replied, undeterred. “So, having you respond with completely irrelevant far-right internet talking points is really not very helpful here.”

Below her catalog of clapbacks, Bondi had written a handwritten note “On Epstein” positing whether Whitehouse had ever accepted money from Reid Hoffman, who once invited Epstein to dinner. She used the tidbit to deflect from a question about whether the FBI had seized photos of President Donald Trump with half-naked young women from the safe at Epstein’s estate, as reported by author Michael Wolff.

“Do you know if the FBI found those photographs in their search of Jeffrey Epstein’s safe or premises or otherwise? Have you seen any such thing?” Whitehouse asked.

“You know, Senator Whitehouse, you sit here and make salacious remarks, once again trying to slander President Trump left and right, when you’re the one who was taking money from one of Epstein’s closest confidants, Reid Hoffman,” Bondi replied.

Again, Whitehouse continued unbothered. “The question is, did the FBI find those photographs that have been discussed publicly by a witness who claimed Jeffrey Epstein showed them to him. You don’t know anything about that?” he asked, and Bondi fell silent, having exhausted her scant notes.

It’s disturbing, but not surprising, that Bondi didn’t make actual preparations to answer tough questions from senators. It appears that the attorney general felt no obligation to be accountable to the American people about alleged efforts to cover up for Trump or his underlings, believing them all to be above the law.

[admin]

Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
October 10, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/10/10/headlines



Israeli Government Approves First Phase of Gaza Ceasefire Deal
Oct 10, 2025

The Israeli government has approved the first phase of a Gaza ceasefire deal. It includes an exchange of the hostages held by Hamas in return for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Al Jazeera is reporting that Israeli forces in Gaza have started to retreat behind the lines agreed to under the deal. Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians are streaming from the southern part of the Gaza Strip to the north. On Thursday, Hamas’s exiled Gaza chief Khalil al-Hayya said all Palestinian women and children will be released, and issued a statement declaring an end to the war.

Khalil al-Hayya: “Today, we announced that we have reached an agreement to end the war and aggression against our people and to begin implementing a permanent ceasefire, the withdrawal of the occupation forces, the entry of aid, the opening of the Rafah crossing in both directions and the exchange of prisoners.”

It comes as President Trump announced that the Israeli hostages will be released from Gaza on Monday or Tuesday. Under terms of the deal, 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences and another 1,700 Gazans detained by Israel during the war would be released. Meanwhile, the U.S. is sending about 200 troops to Israel to monitor the ceasefire deal.

This is Palestinian Civil Defense member Nouh Al-Shaghnouby, who joined celebrations Thursday in Gaza City.

Nouh Al-Shaghnouby: “Honestly, these are indescribable feelings. We can’t believe it. But thank God the war has ended, and we are alive. Honestly, we hope the war does not come back and for this to be really the end.”

In Tel Aviv, Israelis gathered at the public plaza known as Hostages Square to celebrate news of the ceasefire. This is Udi Goren, cousin of Israeli hostage Tal Haimi, who was confirmed dead in Gaza and whose body is believed to be held by Hamas.

Udi Goren: “Bringing back the hostages is just the first phase of this deal, and rightfully so, finally prioritizing bringing them home before anything else. But after we bring them all home, it’s time to start rebuilding our future.”

Meanwhile, Israeli Army Radio is reporting that 600 aid trucks will be allowed to enter Gaza daily, coordinated by the United Nations and other international aid groups. Tom Fletcher is the U.N.’s top emergency relief coordinator.

Tom Fletcher: “So, here is what we plan to deliver in the first 60 days of the ceasefire. We will aim to increase the pipeline of supplies to hundreds of trucks every day. Food — we will scale up the provision of food across Gaza to reach 2.1 million people who need food aid and around 500,000 people who need nutrition. Famine must be reverted in areas where it has taken hold, and prevented in others.”

Grand Jury Indicts New York Attorney General Letitia James
Oct 10, 2025

A grand jury has criminally indicted New York Attorney General Letitia James after President Trump instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to go after his political enemies, writing on X, “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility.” Lindsey Halligan, whom President Trump installed to serve as U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, presented the case to the grand jury. Last month, Halligan secured charges against James Comey, the former FBI director. Trump forced out his previous U.S. attorney for refusing to bring charges against Comey and James. This is Attorney General Letitia James.

Attorney General Letitia James: “This is nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system. He is forcing federal law enforcement agencies to do his bidding. … And so, today, I’m not fearful. I’m fearless.”

2025 Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Venezuelan Opposition Leader María Corina Machado
Oct 10, 2025

The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado. The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced its decision in a ceremony in Oslo earlier today.

Jørgen Watne Frydnes: “She is receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

In 2023, Machado launched a campaign to challenge incumbent President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela’s 2024 election. She was barred from running after the government accused her of corruption and cited her support for U.S. sanctions against Venezuela. Machado has vowed to privatize Venezuela’s state oil industry. She’s praised right-wing Latin American leaders, including Argentina’s Javier Milei.

In 2020, Machado’s opposition party, Vente Venezuela, signed a pact formalizing strategic ties with Israel’s Likud party led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Machado has said that, if elected, she’ll move Venezuela’s Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

We’ll have more on María Corina Machado later in the broadcast.

Colombia’s President Petro Claims Colombians Killed in Boat Struck by U.S.
Oct 10, 2025

The Nobel Peace Prize is being awarded at a time when the U.S. bombed four boats off the coast of Venezuela, killing 21 people. Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro said Wednesday that the U.S. killed Colombians in one of the boats it bombed in the Caribbean for allegedly carrying drugs.

Peruvian Lawmakers Swear In New President
Oct 10, 2025

In Peru, lawmakers swore in a new president, 38-year-old head of Peru’s Legislature, José Jerí, soon after voting unanimously to remove President Dina Boluarte. Her removal comes after months of deadly protests in rural Andean and Indigenous communities; rights groups accused Boluarte’s government of using lethal force to suppress the protests. Boluarte was also enmeshed in a corruption scandal involving undeclared assets and watches.

U.S. Begins Implementation of $20 Billion Bailout for Argentina
Oct 10, 2025

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the U.S. has begun implementing parts of a bailout for Argentina by finalizing a $20 billion currency swap with Argentina’s central bank. Argentina’s far-right President Javier Milei is an ally of President Trump. On Thursday, eight Democratic senators introduced a bill that would prevent the Treasury Department from rescuing Argentina’s economy. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said, “It is inexplicable that President Trump is propping up a foreign government, while he shuts down our own.”

Federal Government Shutdown Enters 10th Day
Oct 10, 2025

In Washington, the federal government shutdown has entered its 10th day. On Thursday, President Trump said at a Cabinet meeting he will permanently cut programs approved by Congress during the shutdown, like billions of dollars in climate and infrastructure for Democratic-led states, adding, “we’re only going to cut Democrat programs.” The White House has suggested furloughed federal workers may not receive back pay. On Thursday, House Speaker Mike Johnson ruled out advancing a standalone bill to pay the salaries and benefits of military members, who are due to miss paychecks on October 15.

Meanwhile, Food & Water Watch reports that if the shutdown continues into next week, 5.3 million children under the age of 5 will lose access to SNAP food assistance benefits, with many likely to go hungry. That’s on top of more than 2 million people set to lose some — or all — of their SNAP benefits under the budget reconciliation bill Trump signed in July.

Federal Judge Blocks Trump’s Deployment of National Guard Troops in Illinois
Oct 10, 2025

A federal judge in Chicago has issued a temporary restraining order against President Donald Trump’s deployment of hundreds of National Guard troops to Illinois, after city and state officials sued to block the move. U.S. District Judge April Perry said in an oral ruling Thursday that deploying soldiers would “only add fuel to the fire that defendants themselves have started.” The ruling came as Illinois’s Democratic Governor JB Pritzker once again accused Trump of overstepping constitutional limits on his authority.

Gov. JB Pritzker: “We’ve seen at every turn that they’ve tried to militarize our cities. Indeed, look at what ICE and CBP are doing. They’re wearing fatigues. They’re carrying long guns, automatic weapons. They’re coming to downtown. Come on, downtown Chicago, Michigan Avenue, what is the purpose of that? It’s all a show.”

Separately, another federal judge in Chicago ruled Thursday that federal agents violated the constitutional rights of peaceful demonstrators, journalists and religious leaders at recent protests against ongoing ICE raids. A lawsuit brought by victims of the violence accuses federal agents of a “pattern of extreme brutality,” saying they tackled and slammed people into the ground and fired rubber bullets and pepper balls at peaceful protesters and working journalists. In her ruling, District Court Judge Sara Ellis wrote, “Individuals are allowed to protest. They are allowed to speak. That is guaranteed by the First Amendment of our constitution, and it is a bedrock right that upholds our democracy.” Judge Ellis’s temporary restraining order also requires all uniformed federal agents to prominently display identification like badge numbers on their uniforms or helmets.

National Guard Troops Set to Begin Patrols of Memphis
Oct 10, 2025

In Tennessee, National Guard troops are scheduled to begin patrolling the streets of Memphis today, over the objections of city officials. They’ll add to a surge of federal law enforcement officers already in Memphis. Trump claims the deployment is aimed at quelling violent crime in the majority-Black city. On Thursday, Trump signaled he’s prepared to send troops into even more cities.

President Donald Trump: “And we’re restoring law and order in our country. We’re restoring it here, but we’re restoring it — right now we’re in Memphis. We’re going to Chicago. We’re going to other cities.”

Oklahoma’s Republican Governor Criticizes Trump’s Deployment of Texas Troops to Illinois
Oct 10, 2025

Oklahoma’s Republican Governor Kevin Stitt has criticized the deployment of National Guard troops to Illinois. Stitt is the current chair of the National Governors Association. Speaking to The New York Times, he said, “Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration.” Stitt stated that President Trump should have first federalized troops already in Illinois.

Texas Court Halts Execution of Robert Roberson, Convicted over “Shaken Baby Syndrome”
Oct 10, 2025

A court in Texas has halted the execution of Robert Roberson, whose 2003 murder conviction over the death of his 2-year-old daughter was based on the “shaken baby syndrome” theory, which has never been scientifically validated. On Thursday, a narrow 5-4 majority of Texas’s Court of Criminal Appeals granted Roberson’s request to stay his execution, citing a Texas law that allows for new trials in cases with flawed scientific evidence. The trial court that convicted Roberson will now consider whether he should be granted a new trial. Throughout his more than two decades on death row, Roberson has always maintained his innocence.

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After Gaza Ceasefire, “Massive Political Pressure” Needed to Prevent Israel from Restarting the War
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
October 10, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/10/10 ... transcript



"A 'magic pill' made Israeli violence invisible. We need to stop swallowing it"
International Crisis Group

A ceasefire came into effect in Gaza on Friday after the Israeli government approved the first phase of the U.S.-backed plan to end two years of war in the Palestinian territory. The deal calls for a pause in Israeli attacks, the release of the remaining Israeli captives held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons, as well as an influx of badly needed humanitarian aid for the starving population of Gaza. Israeli forces have pulled back but continue to control roughly half the territory, with the ceasefire agreement calling for further withdrawals in later phases.

“This is a deal that really should have been made long, long ago,” says Amjad Iraqi, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group. “We’ve known that the parameters of this truce have been on the table for well over a year, if not since the very beginning of the war.”

Palestinian human rights attorney Diana Buttu says while people are happy for a pause in the slaughter, she finds it “repulsive” that Palestinians had to bargain with their own oppressors. “It should have been that the world put sanctions on Israel to stop the genocide, rather than forcing Palestinians to negotiate an end to it.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Israel’s government has approved the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal, that includes a pause in Israeli attacks and the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons. President Trump announced yesterday the Israeli hostages will be released from Gaza on Monday or Tuesday as he plans to travel to the Middle East.

According to the deal, 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences and another 1,700 people from Gaza detained in the last two years would be released. Hamas has demanded the release of prominent Palestinian political prisoner Marwan Barghouti, but his name was reportedly secretly removed from the prisoner exchange list by Israel.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is sending about 200 troops to Israel to monitor the ceasefire deal.

The Israeli military Friday confirmed the ceasefire had come into effect as soldiers retreated from parts of Gaza. Tens of thousands of Palestinians, including families that had been forced to the south, began their trek back to northern Gaza after news that Israeli forces were withdrawing.

Returning Gaza City residents made their way through mounds of rubble and destroyed neighborhoods, searching for any sign of their homes and belongings. Among them, Fidaa Haraz.

FIDAA HARAZ: [translated] I came since the morning, when they said there was a withdrawal, to find my home. I’m walking in the street, but I do not know where to go, due to the extent of the destruction. I swear I don’t know where the crossroads is or where my home is. I know that my home was leveled, but where is it? Where is it? I cannot find it. What is this? What do we do with our lives? Where should we live? Where should we stay? A house of multiple floors, but nothing was left?

AMY GOODMAN: Al Jazeera reports Israel’s army said it would allow 600 humanitarian aid trucks carrying food, medical supplies, fuel and other necessities daily into Gaza, through coordination with the United Nations and other international groups.

On Thursday, the exiled Hamas Gaza chief Khalil al-Hayya declared an end to the war.

KHALIL AL-HAYYA: [translated] Today, we announced that we have reached an agreement to end the war and aggression against our people and to begin implementing a permanent ceasefire, the withdrawal of the occupation forces, the entry of aid, the opening of the Rafah crossing in both directions and the exchange of prisoners.

AMY GOODMAN: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke today in Israel.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] Today, we mark one of the greatest achievements in the war of revival: the return of all of our hostages, the living and the dead as one. … This way, we grapple Hamas. We grapple it all around, ahead of the next stages of the plan, in which Hamas is disarmed and Gaza is demilitarized. If this can be achieved the easy way, very well. If not, it will be achieved the hard way.

AMY GOODMAN: In the United States, President Trump hailed his administration’s ceasefire plan during a Cabinet meeting Thursday as concerns mount regarding potential U.S. and foreign intervention in the rebuilding of Gaza.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Gaza is going to be slowly redone. You have tremendous wealth in that part of the world by certain countries, and just a small part of that, what they — what they make, will do wonders for — for Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by two guests. Diana Buttu, Palestinian human rights attorney, former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organization. She’s just recently written a piece for The Guardian. It’s headlined “A 'magic pill' made Israeli violence invisible. We need to stop swallowing it.” And Amjad Iraqi is a senior Israel-Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group, joining us from London.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Diana Buttu, let’s begin with you. First, your response to the ceasefire-hostage deal that’s just been approved by the Israeli government and Hamas?

DIANA BUTTU: Well, first, Amy, it’s really quite repulsive that Palestinians have had to negotiate an end to their genocide. It should have been that the world put sanctions on Israel to stop the genocide, rather than forcing Palestinians to negotiate an end to it. At the same time, we’re also negotiating an end to the famine, a famine that Israel, again, created. Who are we negotiating with? The very people who created that famine. And so, it’s really repugnant that this is the position that Palestinians have been forced to be in.

And so, while people here are elated, happy that the bombs have stopped, we’re also at the same time worried, because we’ve seen that the international community, time and again, has abandoned us. Everybody is happy that the Israelis are going home, but nobody’s talking about the more than 11,000 Palestinians who are currently languishing in Israeli prisons, being starved, being tortured, being raped. Many of them are hostages picked up after October of 2023, being held without charge, without trial, and nobody at all is talking about them.

So, while people are happy that the bombs have stopped, we know that Israel’s control has not at all stopped. And it’s made it — Israel has made it clear that it’s going to continue to control every morsel of food that comes into Gaza. It’s going to control every single construction item that comes into Gaza. And it’s going to continue to maintain a military occupation over Gaza.

This is not a peace agreement. This is not an end to the occupation. And I think it’s so important for us that we keep our eyes on Gaza and start demanding that Israel be held to account, not only for the genocide, but for all of these decades of occupation that led to this in the first place.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the exchange of hostages, Israeli hostages, dead and alive, and Palestinian prisoners? According to the Hamas Gaza chief, I believe they’re saying all women and children, Palestinian women and children, picked up over these last two years — or is it beyond? — are going to be released. And then, of course, there are the well over a thousand prisoners who are going to be released.

DIANA BUTTU: No, not quite. So, there are 250 who are political prisoners who are going to be released, and that list just came out about a little over an hour ago. But there are also 1,700 Palestinians, solely from Gaza, who are going to be released. And these were people — these are doctors, these are nurses, these are journalists and so on, who were — who Israel picked up after the 7th of October, 2023, and has been holding as hostages. These are the people that are going to be released. There are still thousands more, Amy, that are from the West Bank, that we do not know what is going to happen to them.

And so, while the focus is just on the people in Gaza — and again, there is no path for freeing all of those thousands of Palestinians who are languishing in Israeli prisons, being starved, being tortured, being raped. What’s going to happen to them? Who’s going to be focusing on them? I don’t think that it’s going to be this U.S. administration.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to talk about the West Bank in a minute. More than a thousand Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank just over the last two years. But I first want to get Amjad Iraqi’s response to this deal that has now been signed off on. I mean, watching the images of tens of thousands, this sea of humanity, of Palestinians going south to north, to see what they can find of their homes in places like Gaza City, not to mention who’s trapped in the rubble. We say something — well over 60,000 Palestinians have been killed, but we don’t know the real number. It could be hundreds of thousands.

AMJAD IRAQI: Indeed, Amy. And to kind of continue off of Diana’s points, this is a deal that really should have been made long, long ago. We’ve known that the parameters of this truce have been on the table for well over a year, if not since the very beginning of the war, what they used to define as an all-for-all deal, the idea that Hamas would release all hostages in exchange for a permanent ceasefire. And the reasons for the constant foiling of it are quite evident. And it’s important to recognize this not for the sake of just lamenting the lives, the many lives, that have been lost and the massive destruction that could have been averted, but it needs to really inform the next steps going forward.

The biggest takeaway of what’s happening right now is that in order for a ceasefire to be sustained, in order for Gaza to be saved from further military assault, you need massive political pressure. And we’ve seen this really build up in the past weeks and months. You saw this, for example, from European governments, which, even through the symbolic recognition of Palestinian statehood, was very much venting their frustration with the Israeli conduct in the war, the fact that the EU was actually starting to contemplate more sort of punitive measures against Israel, such as partial trade suspensions, potential sanctions against Israel. We saw this building up over the past few weeks. Arab states have started to use much of their leverage, especially after Israel’s strike on Doha or on Hamas’s offices in Doha. We started seeing Gulf and other Arab and Muslim states come forward to President Trump at the U.N. saying that Israel aggression cannot continue like this.

And most crucially is, of course, President Trump himself and of Washington finally saying that it needs to put its foot down to stop this war, which we’ve heard repeatedly from Trump himself. But this is really the first time since the January ceasefire agreement where Trump has really insisted that this come to an end.

Now, this — now there’s much to be sort of debated about the Trump plan itself, but this aspect of the truce cannot continue, and certainly cannot save Palestinian lives, unless that pressure is maintained. The concern now is that that pressure will recede or alleviate, because there’s now a deal that’s signed. But, actually, in order to enforce it, that pressure really needs to be maintained.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think was the turning point, Amjad? The bombing of Qatar? Now, I mean, The New York Times had an exposé that Trump knew before, not just in the midst of the bombing, that Israel was bombing their ally to try to kill the Hamas leadership. But do you think that was the turning point?

AMJAD IRAQI: It certainly might have expedited, I think, a lot of factors that were already building up. As I said, pressure had been mounting against Israel for quite a while. There was really outrage, not just at the continuance of the military assaults, but the policy of starvation, which was very evident on the ground, and Israel’s complete refusal to let in aid, its failed project with — through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

So, this had all been building, but I do think the strike on Doha really pushed Arab states to say that enough is enough. To see them really meet all together with President Trump and create a bit more of a united position to insist that this really couldn’t go on, I think, has really signaled that Israel really crossed a certain line geopolitically. Now, of course, that line should have been recognized as being crossed well before because of the facts on the ground in Gaza, but I do think that this has helped to kind of push things over the edge a bit more assertively.

There are also speculations about Trump, of course, trying to have his name in for the Nobel Peace Prize, and potentially other factors. But I do think that the timing of this, again, regardless of what ended up pushing it over the line, it is unfortunate that it has really taken this long. And it’s really up to global powers and foreign governments to recognize that in order to make sure that this stays, that they really need to keep that pressure up.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Amjad Iraqi, the core demand of the ceasefire is that Hamas disarm and end its rule. What security guarantees is Hamas seeking for its own members to lay down their arms and not face a wave of arrests or assassinations? How is this going to work? And talk about who you see running Gaza.

AMJAD IRAQI: So, these things are still a bit unclear. So, throughout the ceasefire talks, Hamas has kept insisting about the idea of U.S. guarantees that Israel will not end the war. But there’s never really any clear, concrete way to prove this. And as we’ve seen before, like in the January ceasefire deal and in much of the ceasefire talks, even if President Trump expresses his desire to see an end to the war, oftentimes he would still hand the steering wheel to Prime Minister Netanyahu. And if Netanyahu decided that he wanted to thwart the ceasefire talks, if he wanted to relaunch military assaults, and the Israeli military and the government would back it, then Trump and Washington would fall into line and amplify those calls, and even President Trump himself would sort of cheer on the military assaults.

And so, this factor has certainly weighed a lot on Hamas, but I do think there’s a culmination of pressure, the fact that Arab states have insisted on Hamas to try to show, at least signal, certain flexibility, even though many of its demands have been quite consistent throughout the war. But the fact that I think Hamas is now feeling that there’s also a bit more pressure on Israel to actually ensure that they at least try to take the gamble that they will not return to war.

And in regards to decommissioning and disarmament, publicly Hamas has placed a red line around this right to bear arms. But historically, and even recently, they do say that they are willing to have conversations about decommissioning, as long as it’s tied to a political framework, especially one that’s tied to the establishment of a Palestinian state. Now, one can really debate how much this process is actually quite feasible, and obviously the Israeli government and much of the Israeli public is quite adamant in its opposition against Palestinian statehood, but Hamas may at least offer some space for those conversations to be had. There are discussions about it potentially giving up what it might describe as its larger or more offensive weaponry, like rockets or anti-tank missiles. And there’s bigger questions around firearms.

But I think it’s important to put this question not as a black-and-white issue, as something that has to come first in the political process, as Israel is demanding, but one that requires trust building and confidence building in the rubric of a process of Palestinian self-determination. This is important not just in the case of Palestine, but across many conflicts around the world where the question of decommissioning, about establishing one rule, one gun, one government for a society, requires that kind of process. So, it shouldn’t just be a policy of destroying and military assaults and so on. You do need to engage in these questions in good faith.

AMY GOODMAN: There are so many questions, Diana Buttu, in this first stage of the ceasefire-hostage deal, is really the only one that Netanyahu addressed today in his speech. You’re usually in Ramallah. You spend a lot of time in the West Bank. Where does this leave the Palestinian Authority? I don’t think the West Bank is talked about in this deal. And what about the fact that we’re looking at pictures of Netanyahu surrounded by Steve Witkoff on one side and Jared Kushner, who has talked about — as we know, famously referred to Gaza as “very valuable” waterfront property?

DIANA BUTTU: Well, I think that this plan was really an Israeli plan, and it was repackaged and branded as a Trump plan. And you can see just in the text of it and the way that all of the guarantees were given to the Israelis, and none given to the Palestinians, it’s really an Israeli plan.

But beyond that, it’s important to keep in mind that when Trump was going around and talking about this plan, that he consulted with everybody but Palestinians. He didn’t talk to Mahmoud Abbas. He didn’t even let Mahmoud Abbas go to the U.N. to deliver his speech before the U.N. I’m pretty certain he didn’t speak to the U.N. representative, Palestine’s representative to the U.N. And so, this is — once again, we’ve got a plan in which people are talking about Palestinians, but never talking to Palestinians. So, again, this is very much an Israeli plan repackaged as a Trump plan and branded as a Trump plan.

In terms of them looking at Gaza as being prime real estate, this is not at all different from the way that they’ve done it in the past, and this is not at all the way that Israel has looked at Palestine. And this is because this is the way that colonizers look at land that isn’t theirs. They ignore the history of the place. Gaza is an — has an old history. It has some of the oldest churches, I think the second-oldest church in the world. It has some of the oldest mosques. It has an old civilization. We want Gaza to be Gaza. We don’t want it to be Dubai or any other place. We want it to be Gaza. And so, the idea of somehow turning it into prime real estate, this is the mentality of somebody who’s coming from outside. This is the way that colonizers think. This isn’t the way that the Indigenous think. And so, you can see in this plan that it’s not only the idea of the outside coming in, but they certainly didn’t consult Palestinians at all.

As for what’s going to happen to the Palestinian Authority, it’s clear that they don’t want the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip, and it’s clear that they do want to have a foreign authority in the Gaza Strip. But once again, Amy, when is it that Palestinians get to decide our own future? Are we really going back to the era of colonialism, when other people get to decide our future? And that’s what this plan is really all about.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to be continuing to cover this story. President Trump is expected to be there for the signing of the ceasefire in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt on Sunday, and the hostages and prisoners are expected to be released on Monday or Tuesday. Diana Buttu, I want to thank you for being with us, Palestinian human rights attorney, former adviser to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Amjad Iraqi, Israel-Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group.

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2025 Nobel Peace Prize for Anti-Maduro Leader María Corina Machado “Opposite of Peace”: Greg Grandin
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
October 10, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/10/10 ... transcript



"America, América: A New History of the New World"

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to María Corina Machado, a leading Venezuelan opposition figure. Machado was set to run for president last year, but she was disqualified by the government of President Nicolás Maduro, with fellow opposition leader Edmundo González standing in for her. Venezuela’s National Electoral Council ultimately declared Maduro the winner of the contested election, and he was sworn in for his third term in January.

Machado has voiced support for U.S. sanctions against Venezuela and other efforts to topple the government; she aims to privatize the country’s state oil industry and has praised right-wing Latin American leaders, including Argentina’s Javier Milei and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele.

Friday’s Nobel announcement comes as U.S. President Donald Trump has openly campaigned for the award.

“It’s a perplexing choice,” says Greg Grandin, a historian of Latin America. “They’ve given it to somebody who’s completely aligned with the most militarist and darkest face of U.S. imperialism.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced today the recipient of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize.

JØRGEN WATNE FRYDNES: The Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 goes to a brave and committed champion of peace, to a woman who keeps the flame of democracy burning amidst a growing darkness. The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 to María Corina Machado. She is receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy. …

María Corina Machado meets all the three criteria stated in Alfred Nobel’s will for the selection of a peace prize. She has brought her country’s opposition together. She has never wavered in resisting the militarization of Venezuelan society. She has been steadfast in her support for a peaceful transition to democracy.

AMY GOODMAN: María Corina Machado is a longtime U.S. ally, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize last year by a number of Florida Republicans, including then-Senator Marco Rubio, who’s now President Trump’s secretary of state. In 2002, Machado supported the coup that briefly overthrew Venezuela’s democratically elected President Hugo Chávez.

Machado attempted to run for president against incumbent Nicolás Maduro in the 2024 race, but was barred from running after the government accused her of corruption and cited her support for U.S. sanctions against Venezuela. Edmundo González ran in her place. Venezuela’s National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner, but the opposition claimed González won.

Machado has vowed to privatize Venezuela’s state oil industry. She has also praised right-wing Latin American leaders, including Argentina’s Javier Milei.

The Nobel Committee’s selection of Machado comes at a time of heightened tension between the U.S. and Venezuela, as the U.S. continually bombs boats off the coast of Venezuela while threatening to launch a larger military operation. On Thursday, the Venezuelan government requested an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council to discuss the U.S. military actions.

For more, we go to Greg Grandin, Yale University history professor, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, whose latest book is America, América: A New History of the New World.

Professor Grandin, welcome back to Democracy Now! Your response to this Nobel Prize announcement?

GREG GRANDIN: Well, thanks for having me, Amy.

It’s a — it’s a perplexing choice on a number of levels and, it seems, inevitably will bring about the opposite of peace. You know, Machado is not a unifier, as the committee said. She represents the most intransigent face of the opposition, and not just — as you mentioned in your introduction, not just against Maduro, but against, you know, a democratically elected Hugo Chávez. She was a supporter of the 2002 coup. She has constantly divided the opposition and handicapped the opposition, frankly, when the opposition was trying to come up with a more moderate position that could challenge the social — the socialism of — 21st-century socialism that Chávez represented. She constantly represented a more hard line in terms of economics, in terms of U.S. relations, you know, and that intransigence has led her to rely on outside powers, notably the United States.

So, I mean, they didn’t give it to Donald Trump, but they seem to have given it to the next best thing in terms of — at least as long as Marco Rubio is concerned, if he needs justification to escalate military operations against Venezuela. It really seems to be a disastrous choice and a smear on the — I mean, your next guest is Cory Doctorow. It’s really the enshittification of the Nobel Peace Prize. I mean, they gave it to Kissinger in the 1970s, but at least he — they waited 'til he negotiated an end to the Vietnam War. I mean, I think of Rigoberta Menchú, who won it in the early 1980s, and, you know, her whole family was wiped out by U.S.-supported militarists and death squads in Guatemala. And now they've given it to somebody who’s completely aligned with the most militarist and darkest face of U.S. imperialism. It’s really a shocking choice.

AMY GOODMAN: And very quickly, again, this coming as the U.S. bombs one Venezuelan boat after another. The Colombian president, Petro, said in one of the bombings, a Colombian was killed. But an interesting piece in The New York Times, President Trump calling off efforts to reach a diplomatic agreement with Venezuela, paving the way for potential military escalation. Richard Grenell, the special presidential envoy, interim executive director of the Kennedy Center, had been leading the negotiations with Maduro. He has been instructed to cut off all diplomatic outreach. So, as we wrap up, if you can talk about what is happening —

GREG GRANDIN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — right now and the rage President Trump, interestingly, will feel at not getting the Nobel Peace Prize himself, as he has very explicitly demanded, and escalating what’s going on in Venezuela?

GREG GRANDIN: Yeah, it’s just going to harden positions all around. And Machado has not denounced, she’s actually endorsed the general framework for the — that legitimates the bombing of these go-fast boats in the Caribbean, four of them now, last one filled, apparently, with Colombians. She hasn’t denounced it. She’s supported it. She supports the idea, the framework, that the government is basically a cartel, and to blow up these boats is not to kill Venezuelans, but to kill, as she puts it, narcotraficantes.

I mean, it’s really — you know, there are plenty of feminist activists that oppose Maduro in Venezuela that would have legitimated the peace prize, that would have legitimated the opposition. There’s Isabel Mejias, who’s a feminist. She’s the head of Araña Feminista, the Feminist Spider. There’s Ana Rosa Torres, who considers herself a socialist, and she opposes the opposition and U.S. policy. That would have — that would have made sense, if the committee felt that, you know, it was time for Maduro to go.

But this really just actually strengthens Maduro, because, you know, it confirms his narrative about the opposition being in league with the Trump administration. So, you can just imagine that this is going to, as I said, bring about the opposite of peace. It’s going to — it’s laying the groundwork and justifying greater military escalation. It’s really a disaster. It’s really, really hard to understand how they came to this decision.

AMY GOODMAN: Greg Grandin, I want to thank you very much for being with us, Yale University history professor, Pulitzer Prize-winning author. His latest book, America, América: A New History of the New World.

[admin]

Trump RUNS AWAY As LEAKED Call EXPLODES MAGA CIVIL WAR!
by Jack Cocchiarella
Oct 10, 2025 Jack Cocchiarella Show

Political commentator Jack Cocchiarella reacts to the civil war within MAGA that has Donald Trump panicking.



Transcript

There has been a civil war brewing in
MAGA for quite some time. It really
started with Donald Trump's Jeffrey
Epstein scandal and Republicans trying
to figure out how hypocritical they
could be, how uh shamelessly that they
could lie for Donald Trump before some
realized they just can't. And of course,
one of those Republicans is Marjorie
Taylor Green, who has been going on an
allout offensive against Donald Trump in
the recent days, as it looks like
something has flipped in her brain,
which I didn't really even know was
there. But now, Republicans are falling
in line. And after a leaked call has
gone public, it's only getting worse for
Trump. We're going to get into it all
and how it's blowing up his term. But
before we do, if I could quickly ask you
to leave a like on this video, and if
you haven't already and you enjoy our
channel, to hit that subscribe button
because it goes a long way in supporting
her work. Now, before we get into the
MAGA civil war abbrupting and that
leak's call that is really sparking it
all, I want to start with what Jasmine
Crockett had to say about Marjorie
Taylor Green because I think it's
important context on the shutdown and
her attack on Trump.
I just talked to one of my Republican
colleagues about 30 minutes ago. Um
because I was trying to find out if we
were actually going to go back into
session next week um as my staff is
trying to plan what's going on. But I
can tell you, uh, we actually discussed
that Marjorie was flipping on this
because it seems like everything that is
important, this child ain't read the
bill and has no idea of what's going on.
I don't understand why Georgia keeps
sending her um to DC, but uh, this is
not the first time that she wasn't quite
clear on what damage it was that her
party was ushering in. But listen, I
will take her seeing the light uh, at
any point in time. And so, yeah, it's
sad that she can only see the light when
it directly impacts her because she is
elected to represent almost a million
people. And so, not listening to your
constituents is their calling and
they're talking about their struggles,
but then making it about your children,
your adult children, because their
premiums are going to go up. Listen,
I'll take a yes vote or somebody coming
to the table, whatever way I can get it,
but I just don't believe that that's how
government is supposed to work. I don't
have any children. when I am governing,
I am governing for the people that
elected me. And I don't think that I
should be looking at it and thinking,
well, because this personally is going
to impact me, then maybe I should flip
um how I feel about it.
Yeah. I should note also in that
statement, in all fairness, she did talk
about the people in her district who are
facing uh the the same. One of the one
of the issues right now is that you guys
are when you were saying you're you're
asking about next week. So, the House is
out. Um and it was supposed to come back
next week. Now, it's not coming back
next week. What has been communicated
about how long the House is going to be
out? It seems like the idea is that you
don't come back before the shutdown
ends, which seems difficult to do if you
want to actually negotiate some end to
the shutdown.
Yeah, that was my question because I
said, is it that we're not going to go
back until and unless the Senate passes
the House's version? because what if the
Senate actually does come to some sort
of an agreement and the Senate passes a
version then like we need to come back.
So, um that particular member did not
know. Um but his stance was that he was
like, "Aren't the Dems going to cave?"
So, uh you know, I don't know. I don't
work in the Senate. Um you know what I
mean? But I haven't heard anything about
uh any caving going on. And I think this
issue is just too important. And you
know, this is actually a really ripe
time to have these conversations because
one of the reasons I'm sure that Rep.
Green knows that the premiums are going
to double is because this is when people
are actually going through the renewal
process, right? Like this is um when
when most people are signing up for
their plans. And so now they are seeing
in real time what the estimated cost is
going to be.
Let's make one thing clear. This
shutdown is bad for Republicans.
Overwhelmingly, Americans are blaming
Donald Trump and the Republican party,
as they should, for this shutdown. So,
Democrats, continue to hold the line. Do
not bend the knee. Don't get scared.
Don't capitulate. Don't Chuck Schumer
and strongly worded letter your way out
of this thing. No, hold tough. We are
not having a policy dispute right now.
Healthc care, it's not a policy. It's a
human right. stand up for people's
ability to afford to live and not die of
a treatable illness in the wealthiest
nation in the world. That is the fight
we need to continue to bring on what
Crockett said about Marjorie Taylor
Green. She's so right. She really is
only making this big stink in my opinion
because she's either running for
president trying to maybe avoid a
primary in her district trying to make a
big show. This is about Marjorie Taylor
Green. She said that she realized her
kids premiums were going to go up and
that changed her mind. If that's the
only thing you think about as a
representative of millions of people,
you're not representing anyone. Let's
make that damn clear. But Marjorie
Taylor Green is creating a stink that
I'm pretty happy with. She's creating
problems for Donald Trump. And she
leaked the call that they had recently
and also the calls they haven't had in
this clip right here before how we get
into how that is leading to this civil
war. You know, there's reporting that
President Trump, as you know, recently
called at least two senior Republicans
to ask, and I'm quoting now from these
reports, what's going on with Marjorie,
end quote.
Uh, have you talked to the president
about this issue personally? Uh, it's
obviously so personal for you.
Well, you know, the president has my
cell phone number and he's called me
many, many times. So if he wants
how recently how how recent
I don't get into that kind of uh details
but he knows how to call me and he can
ask me himself.
More Republicans break party ranks. MTG
was right. In the unusual world of
Congress during a shutdown, far-right
fire brand Marjgery Taylor Green is
emerged as an unlikely ally of Democrats
seeking to save millions of Americans
from spiraling health care cost. And
she's not the only Republican making
such an admission. The government
shutdown comes as Republicans call for a
clean continuing resolution that funds
the government as it stands. However, at
the end of 2025, the subsidies for the
Affordable Care Act or ACA will expire.
Democrats want a deal to continue the
subsidies, but according to Punch Bowl
News founder Jake Sherman, Republicans
do not want to extend those Obamacare
premium tax credits at all. Period. When
speaking to Senate Republicans who
remain on Capitol Hill during the
shutdown, Ross story found more strange
bedfellows generated by increasing voter
support for tax breaks on health care
costs. Senator Susan Collins said that
the Affordable Care Act is important to
a lot of us, not just the Democrats. She
agreed that the subsidy should be
extended, though she would like to see
some reform. She didn't specify what,
though. But the sooner we can get an
appropriations bill through, the better
off we're going to be, she said. There
are many discussions going on and I have
been in very close contact with Senator
Jean Shaheen, Democrat New Hampshire,
who is very constructive and is trying
to find a path forward. North Carolina
Senator Tom Tillis told RAW story that
he became the second Republican speaker
of the North Carolina state house since
the Civil War because he was convinced
that former President Barack Obama was
going to make a bad healthc care
decision. Now he appears to have
evolved. We will be making a bad health
care decision if we don't help. All
we're really trying to do is reduce the
waste and abuse, he told Ross Story,
noting that it should be a tax cut that
NYX's highincome wage earners. I do
think there should be skin in the game
for people that have means. Ultimately,
he confessed that Marjgery Taylor Green
is right and noted that only a handful
of members want to see the subsidies
expire. That isn't what reporters are
hearing on the House side, however. So
more and more Republicans are waking up
to the political cost that will be
cutting health care for millions of
Americans. Now, I wish they had woken up
to actually caring about people who are
going to have their premiums double and
triple. People who are going to be
paying more than any other individuals,
countries around the world. It's a
little ridiculous that our health care
system is so yet we pay so much for
it because it's not really a health care
system. It's a corporate sick care
system.
Yeah, it's been broken for a while, but
we don't need Republicans to break it
anymore. But that's the argument that
they are trying to make that it needs to
be fixed because it doesn't work. But by
fixed, they mean broken even more so
that you're further dissatisfied with
government and they can try to push you
away from the idea that maybe Medicare
for all is the way to go, which of
course it is. But Donald Trump is in a
weak position because of Marjorie Taylor
Green and further Republican push back.
Why do you think he's going after his
political enemies? needs a distraction
and Lawrence O'Donnell called out that
distraction right here.
Imagine this prosecutor has never
prosecuted a case in her life trying to
convince a trial jury that Attorney
General James willfully lied on the
application and always knew that she was
going to rent out the property. That is
simply not a provable state of mind. And
the prosecutor cannot call Attorney
General James as a witness to ask her
what her state of mind was. And so
there's a very strong chance that this
case, if it makes it to trial, will get
a directed verdict from the judge
finding that the prosecution was
incapable of proving what it claims in
writing in the indictment is a fact.
Attorney General James state of mind.
So, Attorney General James
is probably on her way to take her place
in history with former FBI Director
James Comey at the top of the Trump
enemies list. and as the people who beat
the madman in the White House in court
because that is what is likely to happen
here. You can listen to all sorts of
lawyers talk about this case, but it
comes down to the same elements as the
James Comey case. The first motions are
going to be to disqualify this uh new
acting US attorney. Those motions will
very probably succeed. The other motions
will be to uh identify this as a
selective and prejuditial prosecution.
Those motions will likely succeed and
that'll be the end of the case.
Attorney General James has already
beaten Donald Trump in court for
business fraud practices in the state of
New York. Donald Trump's appealing that
case in the state of New York. James
Comey and Leticia James have the best
defense lawyers you can possibly have in
these cases. They're going to win.
Donald Trump is going to lose. Don't
worry about them. You don't have to
worry about them. There is much to
summon our outrage about in the madness
of the Trump presidency. But the people
who Donald Trump has so far dragged into
court could not possibly be better
equipped or better financed to fight
Donald Trump in court and crush him.
what Donald Trump is doing to other
people in court, what he's doing to
immigrants in this country who show up
at federal courts for their appointments
and then get thrown to the floor by
masked men and beaten and dragged away
from their families and shipped off to
countries that they've never been to.
They deserve the full force of your
outrage. Those people have no resources.
They have no voice. They've done nothing
wrong. They've tried to do everything
white right. They went to that federal
court to do everything right. and their
lives are already ruined. They cannot
wear their deportation as a badge of
honor.
But the attorney general of the state of
New York
can.
This is nothing more than a continuation
of the president's desperate
weaponization of our justice system.
He is forcing federal law enforcement
agencies to do his bidding.
All because I did my job as the New York
State Attorney General.
These charges are baseless and the
president's own public statements make
clear that his only goal is political
retribution at any cost.
This blatant perversion
of our justice system, that is Donald
Trump's perversion.
She's right. She has nothing to fear.
That smile is real.
She knows she's going to win. She knows
Donald Trump's going to lose. And she
knows she can wear her place on the
Trump enemies list as a badge of honor
for the rest of her life. Donald Trump
is going after James Comey, going after
Leticia James because he is weak,
because he knows his poll numbers are
because he knows Republicans are
starting to turn on him and because he
knows that we are fighting back and we
are keeping Epstein in the news and we
are going to continue to do all those
things. And if you want to support us
doing that on this show, as always, you
can hit that subscribe button, leave a
like on this video. If you stuck around
to the end, drop a blue heart in the
comments. And if you want to watch me
debate some AAGA idiots, you can click
right there. Keep on fighting. Don't let
them silence you. Until next time, I'll
see you

[admin]

Trump BLINDSIDED as DEVASTATING LEAK Surfaces
Legal AF
Oct 9, 2025

Attorneys Brian Kabateck and Shant Karnikian expose how Trump quietly issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), a sweeping directive that weaponizes federal law enforcement to investigate enforcement to investigate and disrupt Americans based on their political beliefs rather than criminal actions. The hosts reveal how this presidential decree—issued with little publicity unlike traditional executive orders—directs the Justice Department, FBI, and IRS to target individuals and tax-exempt organizations exhibiting what Trump defines as "indicia of political violence," including holding views described as anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, anti-American, or having positions on migration, race, and gender that conflict with "traditional American values." They warn that major law firms, such as Arnold & Porter, are advising clients that activities historically protected by the First Amendment may now be subject to criminal prosecution. The directive makes clear that the DOJ intends to strip tax-exempt status and prosecute organizations and their funders for constitutionally protected speech.

Kabateck LLP: Call



Transcript

The Trump administration is making plans
to start prosecuting people for their
beliefs and their positions on things.
Not their actions, but their beliefs.
Today we're looking at the NSPM7,
which is a new directive that Trump
issued that stands for the National
Security Presidential Memorandum 7. Um,
this happened recently. It happened kind
of quietly and they didn't really
publicize it and I think mainstream
media didn't really pick it up. They
thought of this as a executive order.
and we're going to talk about it today
and we're going to talk about the risks
it poses and and how this is actually a
very scary thing that that may violate
many laws and is very unconventional.
I'm Sean Kernikin. That's Brian Kabet.
This is Civil Action on the Legal AF
Network. If you like this content, hit
that subscribe button, hit that like
button, share this with whoever you
think might be interested, especially
this episode is a very interesting and
and frightening thing that I think needs
to be covered. Um, so Brian, where do we
start with this with the NSB?
Yeah, it really is. I mean, look,
they've been nibbling around this the
corners of this since the Kirk
assassination and of course trying to
maximize the value of the Kirk
assassination for their own agenda. And
what they've been nibbling around the
corners on has constantly been we're
going to go after liberalleaning groups.
We're going to go and they're trying to
tie anybody who disagrees with the
position of the administration to some
kind of criminal activity. They're
trying to strip their tax-free status.
But you're absolutely right, Sean. This
this is something that flew below the
radar that most people don't know about.
And I think that's why it's important
that people do share um these videos,
these podcasts we do so that other
people know exactly what's going on
because I guarantee you the average
person on the street doesn't know. So,
let's do a dive into what NSPM is
actually trying to accomplish here. What
it what it says. So it it's trying to
draw an indisha of violence to certain
statements. Okay. So first of all, we're
talking about speech and content of
speech, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And and by the way, let's
talk about how it kind of works cuz it
this is easy to confuse with an
executive order. executive order. Yes,
it's powerful, but it lays out publicly,
always publicly, the the course of
day-to-day government operations.
Whereas a national security directive is
a sweeping policy decree for, you know,
how intelligence and law enforcement and
and defense should operate in this
country. Um, often times they're secret.
They're issued in secret. For example,
in 1980, Jimmy Carter signed one. um
about nuclear prolifer proliferation or
nuclear arsenal. Um this happens in
secret but then they get declassified.
George W. Bush uh signed some after
9/11. Uh one of them including the NSA's
intercepts were ultimately which were
ultimately declared unlawful. You know,
and these weren't revealed at the time.
It often comes out later when they're
declassified. So this is Trump's seventh
one since he's been in office.
But this was declassified. This this was
never classified
was publicized. Yeah. Well, it was
publicly released, but it wasn't
publicized much. And it it's it's
entitled Countering Domestic Terrorism
and Organized Political Violence. And he
basically directs the Justice
Department, the FBI, other law
enforcement apparatus within the federal
government to basically fight what he
calls political violence. But if you
really start looking at it, um, what
they're using as indisha of having
political violence or being, you know,
organizations that that should be
investigated, it's kind of scary stuff.
Um,
yeah, let's go through them. Let's go
through what some of this indishia is of
of political violence or of, you know,
anything that they consider to be uh
contrary that they should investigate.
Anti-Christian, anti- capitalism,
uh, anti-Americanism. I mean what what
is that?
Yeah.
Um extremism on migration, extremism on
race, extremism on gender. I mean it is
sort of like the MAGA um manifesto,
right? It's hostility towards those who
hold traditional American values on
family, on religion, on morality.
Yeah.
Okay. So it's the thought police.
Yeah. It's the thought police. It's it's
the uh Minority Report. Have you ever
seen that movie? You know, getting
arrested before you could commit a crime
because you thought about committing the
crime. I mean, this is and these aren't.
First of all, none of these things are
crimes. Uh political violence is a
crime. That's for sure. Uh but what it's
trying to do is directing strategy to
disrupt these individuals or groups too,
by the way. It's not. So, you know, I
think
it's trying to draw a bridge. It's
trying to draw a bridge between
political violence and and groups and
organizations that the administration
views as contrary to them. And you know,
I want to take a word on an antifa
because that's become a mega buzzword.
You know, there is it's a loose
organization. There's no leadership.
There's no Antifa group. It basically
means anti-fascism.
And they've, you know, they've demonized
it. And and I don't know whether there
are people in Antifa that, you know,
would advocate the violent overthrow of
the United States. That's fine. if they
are.
I don't even think it's an official
organization. I think it it's not.
That's the point. It's not. It's But if
you talk to a MAGA person, they think
Antifa is this, you know, network that's
spread across the country. Like, oh, I
don't know, you know, like the Proud
Boys.
Yeah. I mean, well, it's cuz they need a
boogeyman. In every one of these
circumstances, they need a boogeyman.
This is typical uh playbook for the the
the MAGA verse for the Trump
administration and this is their new
boogeyman. And what's I think very
frightening about this is that they're
sort of weaponizing or they're giving
the the green light for these law
enforcement um arms within the federal
government, the DOJ, the FBI, the IRS to
sort of investigate and I think the
words they use are investigate and
disrupt these groups purely based on
their beliefs. I mean, that's the scary
part of this. So, you know, and and I
think it's so serious, Seant, that that
we know that some major law firms, you
know, that are out there advising their
clients, they're advising their clients,
quote, "The stakes are high." This is a
firm called Arnold and Porter, which is
one of the largest law firms in the
world. And um it says the presidential
memorandum makes clear that the
Department of Justice intends to target
taxexempt organizations and their
funders for investigation and potential
criminal prosecution, including based on
activities that have been historically
viewed as protected by the First
Amendment. So that that basically sums
it up. But what these law firms are
saying is you need to be careful
because the government of the United
States is going to come after you. And
right now I have word that there's a
hundred organizations out there,
left-leaning organizations who have
banded together in and vowed in a letter
to um push back on this attack in the
Philip philopropic.
Gee, I'm struggling with that word,
right? I sound like Trump philanthropic
center. Um and these are, you know,
intended to de to undermine these
organizations. So it literally shot Sean
would be the death nail of some smaller
organizations. All of a sudden they get
audited or their tax status gets removed
because of the position they have not
because of something they've actually
done not because I don't know they
orchestrated some uh you know protest
that got violent or even not got violent
whatever. No, before that it even gets
there, this whole idea, this this NS
NSPM is giving these law enforcement
agencies the the directive to go after
folks and organizations for their
thinking, for their beliefs, for their
for what they stand for, which you know,
and and that line you read about things
that are historically uh protected by
the First Amendment, that's kind of
terrifying that that a major law firm
has to advise its clients that, you
know, while these things have been
historically protected by uh major law
uh by uh the first amendment. Um now
they might not be. Um I think this
directive is a huge violation of the
first amendment. I I think it's a major
problem. I mean, for example, let's just
let's just use a hypothetical here,
which is typical in law schools, which
is, you know, Sean, I want you to assume
that the ACLU, which, you know, we know
represents people who are trying to
exercise free speech rights, for
example. Um, suddenly is deemed as being
unamerican.
Yeah.
Right. And they go after the ACLU. They
want to get rid of the ACLU. go after
groups that aren't, you know, directly
tied to the Judeo kind of Christian
values of supposedly the Trump
administration. Although I have personal
doubts whether or not Trump has any of
those personal values. But I think
that's what they're going to do and I
think that's that's exactly what they're
trying to do here is go after these um
these various organizations.
Yeah. uh one of the law firms uh one of
these big law firms warned their clients
that um you know even individuals could
face criminal exposure under under the
uh under this type of
you know and that's a good question.
What is the problem that the Republicans
have with George Soros?
I don't know. I don't know. They're
obsessed with another boogeyman though
that's it's just another boogeyman. I
mean there's a counterpart on the
Republicans add you know Miriam Add is
the surviving spouse of of um
the Sheldon AD right very wealthy gave a
lot of money still gives a lot of money
to Republican causes so George Soros
does the same on the left but man you
talk to a mega person and they they just
view him as the devil incarnate and
obviously the Trump administration does
too and obviously he's a very wealthy
person who's giving a lot of money to
these causes. Yeah, I I mean this is
it's terrifying stuff. Um and we need to
be aware of this. You know, stuff like
this kind of
I don't know why this one specifically
wasn't on everyone's radar, but I think
it's a big deal. Um and and I think
it'll be challenged. A lot of this is
going to be challenged in the courts and
and I hope it shakes out the right way.
But, you know, this is a I I think a
kind of a new bigger step that the
administration has taken in in
weaponizing or um the law enforcement
agencies to go after people for their
thinking. That's the truly terrifying
part of it. So, you know, new thought
police are coming, the the Trump thought
police and you know, I wonder how the
right feels about this about, you know,
people that are for small government. I
wonder how they feel about thought
police being out there and monitoring
how people think and and potentially
Well, I think once again that that you
know, and this is my last thought on
this. I think once again they they fly
some of the stuff below the radar or
they dress it up. They put lipstick on
the pig and they try to make it sound
like they're trying to protect America
when in fact they're just trying to
advance their own agenda. They're trying
to shut down people who disagree with
them. Um, but look, this is why I said
at the beginning, my last comment on
this, this is why it's important that
people share this information and let
people know what's going on.
Yeah. Just being aware of this. Even if
it's someone on the other side of the
political spectrum, I still think that
there's some common ground that can be
found. I think everyone on both sides
should be outraged by this type of
conduct because if it was a Democrat
doing this and doing stuff like this and
creating thought police, I think
Republicans would be very upset and
rightfully so. Um, so I think it's very
important that we find common ground
across the political spectrum on why
this is wrong. So, you know, with that,
you know, I think we should wrap this
up. I'm Sean Kikin. That's Brian Kabet.
We're two lawyers at a firm called
Kabetch LLP. This is Civil Action on the
Legal AF Network. If you like this
content, like we said, share it, like
it, subscribe, but but but also, you
know, get it out there. Get this message
out there so we can find some common
ground with everyone, every American.
Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you on
the next one.

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