Latest / DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas / Behind the Minab Massacre (interview with Murtaza Hussein) | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

Transcript

Behind the Minab Massacre (interview with Murtaza Hussein) | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas · DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

• 0:08
  Good morning. I guess I cut off the intro a little
• 0:12
  early there. This is DeProgram with Ted Rall
• 0:15
  and Jamarl Thomas. And if you're wondering why
• 0:17
  we're here, even though it's a Saturday morning
• 0:20
  and we don't normally do this on weekends, it's
• 0:23
  because we have a very special interview coming
• 0:25
  up with Murtaza Hussain of Drop Site News. That's
• 0:28
  coming up in about 29 minutes, so stay tuned
• 0:32
  for that. He has co-authored for Drop Site News
• 0:36
  a comprehensive account of the Minab massacre
• 0:41
  that happened in the very early stages of the
• 0:44
  U.S. and Israeli war against Iran that killed
• 0:48
  over 150 students and teachers and other people
• 0:52
  in Iran. And we will get into exactly sort
• 0:56
  of what we know so far and what we still don't
• 0:59
  know. There's no one better to talk to about
• 1:02
  this than Murtaza, I think, and I'm looking
• 1:06
  forward to touching base with him about that.
• 1:08
  If you're just tuning in, thank you very much
• 1:11
  for watching, sharing, liking, and following the
• 1:13
  show. Your support means a lot to us, and it's
• 1:16
  what makes all this possible. So if you have
• 1:20
  the ability to subscribe to the show or make
• 1:23
  a Rumble rant or a Super Chat, we especially
• 1:26
  appreciate you. But seriously, the best thing
• 1:28
  you can really do also is to share the show
• 1:32
  on your social media platform and everywhere
• 1:34
  else. Just get the word out so people know we're
• 1:37
  here. Generally, people tend to like
• 1:39
  it when they know it's here, but that's true about
• 1:42
  a lot of stuff. Good morning, Jamarl. How are
• 1:44
  you doing? I'm doing okay. I'm doing okay. I can't
• 1:47
  complain. It's early Saturday, but it is early.
• 1:50
  It is early. Yeah, yeah, it's a quiet time.
• 1:53
  It's night. Oh my God, today is the most
• 1:56
  beautiful day. It's just stunning. It's
• 1:59
  going to be 70 degrees and just partly
• 2:02
  sunny, partly cloudy, just beautiful. I always wonder
• 2:05
  how they determine the difference between
• 2:06
  partly cloudy and partly sunny. Aren't they kind
• 2:09
  of the same thing? I assume they just mean
• 2:16
  a sunny day with not many clouds in the sky, but
• 2:19
  who knows? As long as the day is gorgeous,
• 2:21
  that's what matters. Yeah, that's all
• 2:24
  good today. And then, going into the
• 2:28
  winter or going into the fall, fall is going to
• 2:31
  be gorgeous here in the States, and I'd imagine
• 2:33
  upstate New York is also gorgeous. Oh, it's great.
• 2:36
  Really great. Really great. Okay, so what we've
• 2:40
  got for you this morning, guys, is basically
• 2:42
  we're following a couple of continuing stories
• 2:45
  that we've been covering over the last
• 2:48
  part of the work week. The scandal
• 2:52
  over the botched execution of Krista Pike
• 2:55
  continues to grow, and I think so far I'm feeling
• 2:59
  confident about my feeling that this is really
• 3:02
  truly the beginning of the end for the death
• 3:04
  penalty in the United States. Krista
• 3:07
  Pike is currently in critical condition at the
• 3:09
  hospital. As doctors are... she's on a ventilator.
• 3:12
  Her doctors are desperately trying to
• 3:15
  save her life after the prison system was desperately
• 3:19
  trying to take her life. And we now know more
• 3:22
  details about how she was choking and struggling
• 3:25
  for over an hour after receiving her first injection.
• 3:28
  Then they tried pentobarbital again a second
• 3:33
  time. But wait, there's more. So the prison chief
• 3:36
  of the state of Tennessee is a guy named Frank
• 3:38
  Strada. Well, apparently he has a habit of
• 3:41
  presiding over botched executions. By the count
• 3:46
  of The Guardian, this Krista Pike thing is the
• 3:49
  number five screwed-up execution that he's
• 3:53
  presided over. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we will get into
• 3:56
  that. Number five. Number five. Yeah, he brought
• 4:02
  Arizona's loss was Tennessee's gain.
• 4:06
  And the riots over the high school, between high
• 4:10
  school students and the riot police in France,
• 4:14
  continue to spread. The teachers are about to
• 4:18
  walk off the job. They probably are not going
• 4:20
  to show up on Monday. The French school system
• 4:23
  has adjusted. They've gone back to the COVID
• 4:26
  days. It's going to be just online instruction
• 4:29
  only. I always say online instruction is just
• 4:32
  an oxymoron. So basically they're rioting over
• 4:37
  lack of education funding, poor classroom conditions,
• 4:40
  overcrowding, and lack of equity between the
• 4:44
  various schools throughout the country. It's
• 4:47
  a national school system. In Strasbourg, which
• 4:50
  is on the German border, beautiful city, tear
• 4:53
  gas and riot police are running rampant. In Marseille,
• 4:57
  the cops were shot at, and fireworks were aimed
• 5:00
  in their direction. The rubbish bins were set
• 5:03
  ablaze in Rennes. Meanwhile, even though the protesters
• 5:10
  are minors, right? These are children. The riot
• 5:13
  cops are going in with batons, tear gas, and
• 5:16
  non-lethal flash-ball guns. Although the thing
• 5:19
  is, that's an oxymoron because they have killed
• 5:22
  people in the past. At least one young girl who
• 5:25
  was 15 or 16 years old lost her eye to one of
• 5:28
  these things yesterday. So France
• 5:31
  is in full spice mode as we go into
• 5:35
  day four of this. And of course, at the bottom
• 5:38
  of the hour, we'll have Murtaza Hussain, senior
• 5:40
  national security and foreign affairs journalist
• 5:42
  at Drop Site News. I would urge you to read, not
• 5:46
  now, because you have to listen to DeProgram,
• 5:48
  but after the show, you should go and check out
• 5:51
  the story that he co-authored with Jeremy Scahill
• 5:54
  and someone else to discuss the latest reporting
• 5:58
  on the U.S. massacre of schoolchildren and
• 6:01
  educators at Minab during the very early days
• 6:04
  of the Israeli-U.S. war against Iran. Okay,
• 6:07
  so that's what we've got. Where shall we start
• 6:10
  with the 23 minutes that we've got before Murtaza
• 6:12
  comes on? I don't think this is going to be the
• 6:16
  end of the death penalty in the United States.
• 6:18
  I don't. I just think you're looking
• 6:23
  at it as a lefty and think to yourself, this
• 6:26
  is so disastrous that they have to do something
• 6:29
  about this, that they can't keep this up. They
• 6:31
  can't keep doing this. But as you pointed out,
• 6:34
  this is this guy's fifth time doing this. He's
• 6:37
  presided over five other of these type of botched
• 6:41
  executions that they are now trying to save
• 6:45
  the woman's life so they can kill her again.
• 6:48
  Think of how dumb this is. Okay, well,
• 6:52
  we don't want her to die a horrific death. We
• 6:54
  want her to die the death that we want her to
• 6:55
  die. So let's save her to do this again.
• 7:01
  It's so dumb. I agree with you that I can't.
• 7:04
  The idea that they would do this to this woman
• 7:06
  again is outrageous. It's like, well, they're
• 7:10
  not going to execute her. They won't execute
• 7:12
  her now. They just won't. First of all,
• 7:15
  my friend Ron Kuby, the great civil rights attorney
• 7:18
  who was an heir, sort of the... he was
• 7:25
  the protege of the great William Kunstler, the
• 7:27
  Chicago Seven attorney. And Ron Kuby, he
• 7:31
  said on Facebook. We're Facebook
• 7:34
  friends as well as real friends. He said
• 7:36
  that probably she suffered
• 7:40
  brain cancer, and under the federal...
• 7:42
  brain damage, and under federal law, the U.S. Code,
• 7:46
  if that happens as a result of something that
• 7:49
  they did, basically they can't execute her. Her
• 7:52
  brain is mush. That basically they screwed
• 7:55
  up, and now they have to commute her sentence
• 7:58
  to life in prison, just sort of as a matter of
• 8:00
  law. So pretty much, whatever life she has
• 8:05
  has now been spared effectively. The state
• 8:08
  of Tennessee, which had a previous botched execution
• 8:10
  earlier this year, has suspended, once again,
• 8:14
  it's the second time this governor has suspended
• 8:16
  the executions. At a certain point,
• 8:22
  look, Florida and Texas will be the last
• 8:24
  to go, right? But at a certain point,
• 8:32
  we have to admit that we just don't, as
• 8:34
  a country, we don't know how to execute people
• 8:36
  properly, right? Do you want to hear about these
• 8:40
  other cases, by the way? The same guy, right?
• 8:43
  He came from Arizona, where he had a similar job.
• 8:47
  He was the head of the executions department
• 8:50
  of the corrections department. Listen to that
• 8:53
  a little bit, the execution department of
• 8:56
  the corrections department. You got to
• 8:58
  love that. Anyway, he created the teams that
• 9:01
  carried out the procedures. He monitored the
• 9:03
  practices, and he obtained the lethal drugs. Right.
• 9:07
  So in May 2022, there's a guy named Clarence
• 9:11
  Dixon. The execution team couldn't find where
• 9:15
  to put the IVs. Ultimately, they kept poking
• 9:18
  him, and they finally made an incision to his
• 9:21
  groin in order to insert the IV. That took about
• 9:25
  40 minutes. In June 2022, Frank Atwood, another
• 9:29
  death row inmate, had to help the executioners
• 9:33
  find his vein after the officials just couldn't
• 9:38
  find his vein. He was 66 years old. The guy had
• 9:41
  a degenerative spinal condition, so he had blood
• 9:45
  flow issues. And then in November of the same
• 9:47
  year, the Arizona idiots couldn't find a vein
• 9:52
  in Murray Hooper, forcing them to insert a catheter
• 9:56
  into his groin. So even though this happened
• 10:02
  back in 2022 three times, they sent him to Tennessee.
• 10:06
  In 2023, the governor appointed him, so that's
• 10:10
  totally on him. And basically, once he went,
• 10:15
  he brought all of the wisdom that he had from
• 10:18
  Tennessee over to... that he had from Arizona
• 10:22
  over to Tennessee. So this is just
• 10:26
  outlandish. It's a freak show. And
• 10:30
  I would just think that from an
• 10:32
  embarrassment point of view, this would just
• 10:35
  come to an end. If you're going to kill people,
• 10:37
  kill people. Sure. Just don't be fancy, which
• 10:42
  is what they're trying to do. It's like if somebody,
• 10:44
  have you ever seen a football player catch
• 10:46
  the ball and the guy's showboating on his way
• 10:50
  to the thing and they strip the ball from him?
• 10:53
  Yep. And it's like, okay, well, you could have
• 10:55
  just run the ball into this. Just run fast. Just
• 10:57
  run fast, right? You don't have to showboat.
• 10:59
  You don't have to do this other stuff. But the
• 11:01
  problem is running fast is a guillotine,
• 11:05
  running fast is a firing squad, right? And we don't want
• 11:08
  people to see people get
• 11:11
  shot. That's impolite. We don't like that. It's
• 11:14
  like, but you're doing the killing anyway. I feel
• 11:17
  like honestly this feels like the trans thing.
• 11:19
  It's like, yes, this is really a man, but we don't
• 11:25
  want to say that's a man because that's impolite.
• 11:27
  And so we as a society will put ourselves in
• 11:33
  the pretzels of what bathroom is used, what
• 11:36
  should they be able to play sports in this way,
• 11:40
  et cetera, et cetera. Meaning it goes beyond
• 11:42
  just, okay, people want to live
• 11:47
  their lives as women or want to live their lives
• 11:48
  as men, and we can accept them doing that, into,
• 11:52
  but now we have to pretend that they're actually
• 11:55
  women, where even on the left, they will be like,
• 11:59
  well, there's no difference. And it's like, are
• 12:02
  you serious? You've gone from this idea
• 12:04
  of placation into completely pretending like
• 12:09
  little Tommy is an astronaut. And I feel like
• 12:13
  it's that same energy. It's like, well, we don't
• 12:15
  want to really kill people, but we want to kill
• 12:19
  people. Right. We want to kill people, but we
• 12:24
  don't want it to look bad. We don't want it to
• 12:26
  look bad. It's impolite. Well, we don't even
• 12:28
  really hardly want anyone to see it. Just a few
• 12:32
  people, just the media, a few reporters,
• 12:35
  and the victim's family, and I guess presumably
• 12:39
  also the murderer's family too,
• 12:43
  right? I just don't see what good it does anyone,
• 12:46
  right? One aspect to this that
• 12:49
  we don't think about very often, but
• 12:51
  it's worth, it would be worth looking into. Maybe
• 12:53
  there's someone who can talk to us about this,
• 12:55
  is the effect that it has on the executioners.
• 13:00
  A lot of times these guards get to know
• 13:04
  these inmates over the course of decades, and
• 13:07
  they befriend them and they start to like them.
• 13:10
  And I've read accounts where the guards
• 13:12
  really were grief-stricken when the
• 13:16
  execution, when capital punishment is carried
• 13:18
  out. In some cases, they have to help participate
• 13:21
  in killing their friend or this person that they've
• 13:24
  gotten to know. And obviously
• 13:27
  they don't have a personal beef with this person.
• 13:31
  They didn't take away their loved one.
• 13:33
  So this is getting back
• 13:37
  to what we were talking about yesterday. At least
• 13:40
  with a system like Sharia law or vigilantism,
• 13:43
  the person who's angry and has a reason
• 13:46
  to be angry carries it out. This is outsourced
• 13:50
  to a low-paid state civil,
• 13:53
  a civil servant assassin, to do basically,
• 13:58
  hey, honey, I'm going to be a little late. I'll
• 14:01
  pick up a chicken on the way home. I've got to
• 14:03
  kill this guy first, and then I'll see you later.
• 14:06
  That can't be good for them. Yeah, but
• 14:09
  it can't be good for the family either. No.
• 14:13
  And to be honest, they're paid.
• 14:15
  It's not like they're being forced to do the
• 14:18
  job. They're paid to do a job. They decide. They
• 14:20
  choose. They decide, I want to work for the prison
• 14:24
  system. You have an executioner who says, hey,
• 14:27
  I like killing people. That's what I want to
• 14:28
  do for a living. And so much so moves from one
• 14:32
  state to another in order to continue to do it.
• 14:34
  It's like in Saudi Arabia, right, where
• 14:36
  they have ads in the paper: head chopper
• 14:39
  required, good vacations. By the
• 14:43
  way, those guys know what they're doing. Yeah.
• 14:46
  The heads usually come off, right?
• 14:48
  That big sword comes down. That person
• 14:51
  is not going home with her head. And by
• 14:53
  the way, that goes back to the guillotine.
• 14:56
  It may be medieval,
• 15:02
  they may come across prehistoric, but it works. Yeah.
• 15:07
  I got to be honest with you. I don't want vigilantes.
• 15:10
  I don't have an issue with the state doing the
• 15:14
  job. They just need to be good, effective at
• 15:16
  the job. Under normal circumstances, we have
• 15:18
  no issue killing people abroad. So why is it
• 15:21
  so dicey here? Get an ICE agent. They do it all
• 15:26
  the time. Yeah. It's strange because
• 15:30
  our history books teach us that when people gathered,
• 15:35
  I'm not even talking about lynchings, but when
• 15:36
  people gathered to watch legal hangings carried
• 15:40
  out in a legal way, we see those photos and we're
• 15:45
  like, oh, that's savage. People brought their
• 15:47
  kids to watch and all that. I don't know. It
• 15:51
  seems less savage than what we're doing now.
• 15:54
  I don't think so. Do it in public. Do
• 15:58
  it in public. If you're going to do it, do it.
• 16:01
  But it's sanitized murder. All I'm saying
• 16:05
  is it should also be carried out in public.
• 16:08
  I think all government functions
• 16:10
  that can be should be carried out, not in private,
• 16:13
  right? I think every meeting between a
• 16:15
  lobbyist and a congressman should be recorded
• 16:17
  and live-cast, live-streamed on the congressman's
• 16:22
  website. I think every meeting of the cabinet
• 16:24
  or the National Security Council should be live-
• 16:26
  streamed. And the only things that should be
• 16:28
  removed are things that directly involve national
• 16:31
  security. But every government document that
• 16:35
  doesn't involve national security should be up
• 16:37
  on a website where reporters and citizens can
• 16:40
  look at them. We pay for all this. It's
• 16:42
  our taxpayer dollars. Why are we being
• 16:46
  kept from seeing what we pay for? Well, I thought
• 16:49
  that was the case, though. It's not. 99.999
• 16:53
  percent of government documents will never be available
• 16:55
  to the public. Yeah, I agree with you on that
• 17:01
  part. Public executions, I get your point. Your
• 17:05
  thing is, it's kind of like cows. There are some
• 17:12
  states where it's illegal to publicize what they
• 17:15
  do in the farms. Right. And it's kind of like
• 17:18
  executions. It's all secret. Well, because,
• 17:21
  the thing is, it's kind of like killing
• 17:24
  kings and queens. The moment that you kill a
• 17:25
  king and queen, you legitimize the fact that
• 17:27
  you can kill a king and queen. It's not appointed
• 17:30
  by God. If it was appointed by God, how are these
• 17:32
  people being killed? And if you say, well, murder
• 17:35
  is bad. We don't like people being killed. Okay,
• 17:38
  well, the state is just committing an open murder.
• 17:43
  And the state doesn't want you to know that it's
• 17:45
  committing an open murder. So the state tries
• 17:47
  to find ways to avoid doing that. Hence, we're
• 17:50
  going to put it behind the wall. We're just going
• 17:52
  to give people a heads-up that, hey, by the way,
• 17:53
  we killed this guy. But the issue is they're
• 17:58
  not doing it cleanly. And I know that sounds
• 18:01
  horrible, but it's true. It is true. Again, the
• 18:08
  issue for me is not necessarily the fact that
• 18:11
  they're killing somebody who's a monster. It's
• 18:13
  that we don't know if it's a flat fact that the
• 18:15
  person is a monster. Well, that's true.
• 18:20
  We know that roughly one out of eight is innocent.
• 18:23
  But also, as for the other seven, and
• 18:26
  this is the real question for me, honestly. Well,
• 18:29
  it's not the question. My real question is what
• 18:31
  you said. I don't think the state can be trusted
• 18:33
  to do this. And I think the state shouldn't be
• 18:35
  in the business of killing anyone, just
• 18:37
  as a matter of philosophy. But I also kind
• 18:42
  of don't really see that we should be judged
• 18:45
  by the one worst thing we've ever done, and that's
• 18:49
  the only thing that should define us.
• 18:51
  If you kill, this woman, Krista Pike,
• 18:54
  she horribly murdered an innocent girl when she
• 18:57
  was 18 years old. And the question is now, at
• 19:00
  the age of 48-ish, should that thing that
• 19:06
  she did on her worst moment, on her worst day,
• 19:10
  should that be the only thing we think about
• 19:13
  when we think about Krista Pike? I don't think
• 19:15
  that's fair. And the death penalty
• 19:19
  implies that it is the only thing we should think
• 19:21
  about. Well, I guess the question is, is
• 19:29
  there a redemption, and what does that look like?
• 19:31
  Right? I'm pro-redemption. I think most people
• 19:34
  who kill, first of all, murder has the lowest recidivism
• 19:38
  rate of any major crime. This isn't like
• 19:42
  pedophiles. Pedophiles,
• 19:45
  they can't help. They usually can't help
• 19:47
  themselves. They usually come back for more.
• 19:50
  The vast majority of people who kill once
• 19:53
  never kill again, never would kill again. So
• 19:56
  it's not really about protecting society. But
• 19:58
  if you're talking about redemption, this
• 20:00
  is someone, it's horrible, obviously,
• 20:03
  but you're not... obviously, redemption
• 20:07
  is possible if, by definition, you catch a person
• 20:10
  who kills one person and then they're not likely
• 20:12
  to ever do anything like that again. By definition,
• 20:15
  redemption is possible. Wait a minute. Is the recidivism
• 20:19
  rate low because they've been in prison for God
• 20:20
  knows how long? If you kill somebody, you
• 20:22
  go to prison for 20 years. Okay, you can kill people
• 20:28
  in prison, right? People do. Yeah-ish.
• 20:32
  That's different. If you're around other
• 20:36
  monsters, it might be harder to kill other monsters.
• 20:38
  But from the standpoint of a civilian population
• 20:41
  that is not interested in killing or not interested
• 20:43
  in violence, you are a predator to those groups
• 20:47
  of people. Most murderers aren't predators. Very
• 20:50
  few murderers are predators, right? Predators
• 20:55
  are very specific. Yeah, are predators. Most
• 20:58
  people who are murderers are in, it's a crime
• 21:01
  of passion, or it's committed in the conduct of
• 21:04
  some other crime. I went to rob the liquor store,
• 21:07
  the guy pulled a gun, I killed him. Right, but
• 21:10
  you were robbing a liquor store and he kills
• 21:12
  somebody in the process of robbing a liquor store.
• 21:14
  Sure, but that's not the kind of thing that you're
• 21:15
  going to... it's not a predator. He's not like,
• 21:17
  he didn't go out to kill someone, right? He went
• 21:20
  out to rob a liquor store. Right. You don't think
• 21:22
  that's predation? Who do you think was going
• 21:24
  to be in the store? Okay, that's fair. Do you
• 21:26
  think they were going to use a gun when they
• 21:27
  were going into the store to rob a liquor store?
• 21:29
  But they're not a predator in that they're looking
• 21:31
  forward to shooting. They're not looking
• 21:33
  to shoot a man in Reno to watch him die, right?
• 21:35
  It's not just for fun. Is that the only
• 21:39
  measure of a predator? They needed money, maybe.
• 21:42
  He robbed a liquor store and killed somebody.
• 21:45
  I'm saying that's predation. It's not like
• 21:48
  just because. That's true. I'm not
• 21:51
  saying he's a psychopath where he just shoots
• 21:54
  a guy and just watches him and enjoys it, and
• 21:56
  that's the only thing predator. That's what I
• 21:58
  was thinking of. Yeah, yeah. But that's, come
• 22:01
  on, that's a cartoonish view of predator.
• 22:03
  I'm saying somebody who would take advantage
• 22:06
  of somebody else. And if you're robbing a liquor
• 22:08
  store, even if you needed the money, fair enough.
• 22:10
  Silence of the Lambs, I was thinking of that.
• 22:12
  Yeah. See, I wasn't thinking of that. I
• 22:14
  was thinking of somebody who just preys on somebody
• 22:16
  else, and robbing a liquor store, it's conceivable
• 22:19
  he would rob another store if he wasn't. Utterly
• 22:22
  conceivable. Yeah, yeah. So I guess the point is
• 22:26
  that that person is still, even if they never
• 22:28
  kill anyone and they just rob liquor stores,
• 22:30
  it's still, you're saying it's still
• 22:33
  predatory behavior. I'm saying the fact that
• 22:35
  they kill somebody in the first liquor store,
• 22:36
  it's very conceivable that they can kill somebody
• 22:38
  in another robbery, even if they're not intending
• 22:40
  to. I'm saying that statistics show that that's
• 22:44
  unusual. That's all I'm saying. Isn't it unusual
• 22:47
  because they are in a cage for 20 years? When
• 22:49
  they get out there, and what is it? A lot of people
• 22:51
  have... a lot of people are... roughly 50 percent
• 22:54
  of murders go unsolved. So it's like, yes, so
• 22:59
  it seems like a lot of those people are still
• 23:01
  out and about. There's a lot of people.
• 23:04
  I remember doing this mental
• 23:07
  brain experiment on the subway one time during
• 23:09
  rush hour and thinking, okay, so based on all the
• 23:12
  number, the average lifespan and all that, in
• 23:14
  the number of unsolved murders and the murders
• 23:16
  that are committed, I was like, there's probably
• 23:19
  someone in this train who killed someone and
• 23:22
  got away with it, right? And that's kind
• 23:25
  of amazing. And they walk among us.
• 23:29
  We know them, right? And they may
• 23:32
  be working with them. But they don't commit another
• 23:36
  murder. Maybe it's someone who,
• 23:39
  I don't know. There's a million circumstances.
• 23:41
  There's a lot of people who kill each other because
• 23:44
  of jealousy, romantic stuff. That happens
• 23:47
  a lot, right? Right. And they should be prosecuted
• 23:51
  to the fullest extent of the law for doing so.
• 23:53
  They're eliminated. Well, I'm saying they shouldn't
• 23:55
  be executed because it's something
• 23:58
  that you did when you were 20 and stupid and
• 24:02
  inexperienced, and now you're in prison for 30
• 24:04
  years. And would you, if you were freed, ever
• 24:08
  do anything like that again? And the answer is
• 24:10
  no. But it's not about whether you do it again.
• 24:13
  It's about what you did. I don't think it's
• 24:17
  fair to say that that's the only thing that matters
• 24:19
  about you as a human being, this one. Should we
• 24:22
  all be judged by the shittiest thing we've ever
• 24:25
  done in our lives, and that's how we should be
• 24:27
  assessed? Well, I understand you don't think that,
• 24:30
  but the fact of the matter is, as a family that
• 24:33
  has just lost somebody, there's a parent that might have
• 24:36
  just lost somebody, or a brother, or et cetera,
• 24:38
  that loss matters. And yeah, there should be
• 24:42
  a cost for that loss. And the question of what
• 24:47
  that cost is will vary. There's some people who
• 24:50
  will say, well, it's not that big of a deal.
• 24:51
  You can make it up later. No, that's the question,
• 24:54
  right? What is that cost? I think nobody thinks
• 24:56
  there should be no cost. The question is, what
• 24:59
  should that cost be? Right. Unfortunately, we're
• 25:01
  going to have more time. Not unfortunately.
• 25:03
  I'm looking forward to it. We have Murtaza on
• 25:05
  in a few minutes. But we also want to
• 25:07
  talk about France. So, obviously,
• 25:11
  these student protests don't seem like they're
• 25:14
  going away anytime soon. They seem like they're
• 25:17
  expanding. This seems like a bigger-than-average
• 25:19
  crisis. And I'm like, I love the French kids.
• 25:24
  Yeah, I was watching the school burn, and
• 25:28
  I was like, holy hell. Holy hell. They are getting
• 25:34
  vigorous. Yeah, they're getting very vigorous.
• 25:38
  Yeah, God bless them. God bless them.
• 25:43
  This also represents a major political crisis
• 25:50
  for the government of Emmanuel Macron. The presidential
• 25:54
  election is next year. This year is
• 25:58
  over in two months. It's coming right
• 26:01
  up. Three months. It's
• 26:04
  really just... obviously, Macron
• 26:08
  is a lame duck. He's not running again, can't
• 26:11
  run again, wouldn't run again even if he could.
• 26:14
  He's got an approval rating that,
• 26:17
  he's jealous of Donald Trump's approval
• 26:19
  ratings. Right. He's like 12 percent,
• 26:22
  14 percent. It's catastrophic. Trump is lapping
• 26:26
  him. Trump is what, 31 percent? He's beaten him by
• 26:29
  like three. I'm hesitant to say what I'm about
• 26:32
  to say, because this is the kind of thing where
• 26:34
  you can definitely walk, you can get
• 26:37
  way over your skis or too far out on a limb easily.
• 26:42
  But it's conceivable. I don't want to say it
• 26:44
  will, but it's conceivable. This is one of those
• 26:47
  May 1968 moments in France where it can bring
• 26:52
  down a government, not just this president,
• 26:55
  but the type of government. In May
• 26:59
  1968, France almost became a communist country.
• 27:03
  It came this close. There was
• 27:07
  an incident where President de Gaulle was on
• 27:10
  the roof of a French government building in Paris,
• 27:12
  and he had a chopper ready to spirit him off
• 27:16
  to exile in West Germany. He was ready to flee
• 27:19
  with his wife. And they were looking off
• 27:23
  the roof, and they saw a riot, a mob of people
• 27:26
  coming down one of those little narrow Parisian
• 27:28
  streets. And they were waiting to see which way
• 27:31
  they would turn. And if they came toward them,
• 27:33
  they were going to fly off. And if they kept
• 27:35
  going straight, they didn't. And they kept going
• 27:40
  straight. And de Gaulle managed to ultimately
• 27:43
  send in the troops and massacre a bunch of them
• 27:47
  and crushed the rebellion. But it was that close.
• 27:51
  And this could get to that.
• 27:57
  This is like the Yellow Vests were a
• 27:59
  prequel to this. And by the way, if
• 28:03
  the Yellow Vest movement or its heirs were
• 28:06
  to join up with this, you would have a national
• 28:10
  uprising that was bigger than May '68. May '68 was
• 28:13
  an urban phenomenon from the left and from the
• 28:15
  trade unions and from the students. Here you would
• 28:19
  have a rural slash urban phenomenon.
• 28:25
  There's never been anything like that.
• 28:27
  That just doesn't happen in revolutionary moments
• 28:29
  where you get populist left meets populist right.
• 28:33
  That could happen. Yeah. Have they said anything
• 28:37
  about the Yellow Vests? Or have the Yellow Vests,
• 28:39
  for one, is the entity even, does it
• 28:41
  still exist? It seems like right now they're
• 28:46
  sort of in wait-and-see mode. The French government
• 28:50
  negotiated with the Yellow Vest people and gave
• 28:53
  them a lot of concessions and promised to pour,
• 28:56
  and started to pour, some resources. That's part
• 28:59
  of what's going on, is that concessions to the
• 29:01
  Yellow Vest movement ended up taking money out
• 29:04
  of other parts of the budget, including education.
• 29:07
  So interesting. So it's kind of like, although I would...
• 29:11
  the first place I would go
• 29:15
  if I were French, and I am French, but
• 29:18
  if I were living in France, I'd be blaming the
• 29:20
  government for pouring money into stupid military
• 29:23
  spending and blowing money on NATO and sending
• 29:27
  money to Ukraine and all this nonsense.
• 29:30
  It's a lot. It can do both. It's one of the most
• 29:33
  bloated countries in the European Union, if I
• 29:37
  remember correctly. In fact, if I remember correctly,
• 29:40
  during the Yellow Vest movement, Germany or the
• 29:43
  European Union had to give them a kind of a dispensation
• 29:47
  to run a higher budget deficit in order to give
• 29:50
  money to the Yellow Vests, in order to bring
• 29:52
  down the level of protests. Because if I remember
• 29:55
  correctly, there were protests going on in
• 29:57
  Iran or something that the U.S. government was
• 29:59
  fully behind, but wasn't behind the French one.
• 30:02
  In fact, they were trying to pretend like the
• 30:03
  French one wasn't existing. It was very strange.
• 30:06
  They were trying to act as if, pay no attention
• 30:09
  to the fact that the Yellow Vest movement is
• 30:12
  paralyzing France for a year. But hey, let's
• 30:15
  pay attention to Iran and hope that they can
• 30:17
  take down the Iranian government. Now, I remember
• 30:19
  that the European Union ended up giving a waiver
• 30:21
  to France to spend more money as a budget deficit
• 30:23
  over the course of that year that the Yellow
• 30:25
  Vests were taking place, to try to bring down the
• 30:27
  protests in France. Yeah. Yeah. And by the way,
• 30:33
  it's impossible to overstate the hostility between
• 30:36
  protesters and the CRS and the other
• 30:40
  French national security forces. The United States
• 30:43
  doesn't have, at least up until now, doesn't have
• 30:46
  a national police. The closest,
• 30:49
  ICE might morph into that, but we're not.
• 30:53
  Well, the FBI is a federal bureau of investigations.
• 30:57
  Yeah, but it's not a police force, right? They're
• 31:00
  not... they don't have
• 31:01
  batons and tear gas. Yeah. So but these
• 31:06
  guys are hated. And I think the antipathy
• 31:09
  is partly born from the fact that
• 31:12
  they're not from the community. Right. So they
• 31:14
  come in. These guys come in from somewhere else.
• 31:16
  So if there's an uprising in Marseille,
• 31:20
  these guys might come in from Brittany and do
• 31:22
  this. They don't have any connection whatsoever
• 31:25
  to the community. To them, these are just brats
• 31:28
  who are causing trouble and need to be put down.
• 31:31
  They're recruited to be goons.
• 31:35
  It's like ICE. They're the worst of
• 31:37
  the worst, except they're kind of
• 31:39
  scarier because they're smarter and better educated
• 31:42
  than ICE. But because they're French,
• 31:47
  they're better at what they do. All right. Well,
• 31:50
  I think with that, I see Murtaza waiting in the
• 31:53
  background. Murtaza, thanks for joining us. If
• 31:55
  you could turn on your camera and your mic. There
• 32:00
  you are. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and bring
• 32:02
  him in. Good morning. How are you? Morning, guys.
• 32:06
  Good. Good to see you. Good to see you. Good to
• 32:09
  see you too. So Murtaza.
• 32:14
  Murtaza is the senior national security and foreign
• 32:18
  affairs journalist at Drop Site News, and we're
• 32:22
  very excited to have you this morning, and thanks
• 32:24
  for coming back, just to talk about this big
• 32:28
  blockbuster report that Drop Site put out that
• 32:32
  you co-authored about the Minab massacre in
• 32:37
  the very early days of the war. Basically, this
• 32:41
  was kind of the first major strike, right?
• 32:44
  The United States, it now turns out, we do know,
• 32:49
  although they denied it, launched a missile attack
• 32:53
  that blew up this school, killed about 158, correct
• 32:57
  me if I'm wrong, students, teachers, maybe some
• 33:01
  parents, other staff at the school.
• 33:07
  They blow up a school. And so you basically now
• 33:11
  have sort of a comprehensive report about how
• 33:15
  it went down, how it happened, and what the effects
• 33:18
  were. And I was wondering if you could just sort
• 33:20
  of tell us the highlights of what you learned.
• 33:24
  Sure, yeah. Well, first of all, thanks for having
• 33:27
  me, and good morning to you guys and everyone
• 33:29
  watching and listening. Yeah, so we did this
• 33:32
  report, which was published on Wednesday, about
• 33:35
  the Minab massacre, and then subsequently a video
• 33:38
  which is based on some of the interviews we did
• 33:40
  with the parents of children who were killed
• 33:44
  in the massacre, or first responders, and so forth.
• 33:48
  And I think there's been quite a bit
• 33:50
  of reporting about the actual event itself. But
• 33:53
  our story was a bit unique in the sense that
• 33:55
  it really dug down with the community that was
• 33:59
  affected, and the families and the staff and the
• 34:02
  first responders and other people in the Minab
• 34:05
  community who were affected by this, to give their
• 34:10
  assessment of what they actually saw that day
• 34:12
  and reconstruct the events from their perspective.
• 34:15
  And then also the impacts it had on the community.
• 34:17
  It's really, as you can imagine, it's had a devastating
• 34:19
  impact on the community, psychological impact,
• 34:23
  emotional impact, especially on the children
• 34:25
  who survived as well, too. And just the description
• 34:28
  of the actual event from the people who were
• 34:31
  there is very harrowing. So I do think that a
• 34:34
  lot of, not all the coverage, but a lot of it
• 34:36
  has been kind of antiseptic, I would say,
• 34:40
  maybe. It's a lot of focus on the technical errors
• 34:43
  that led to the attack, or what the administration
• 34:46
  is saying or not saying. And they did lie about
• 34:49
  it numerous times initially. They haven't come
• 34:51
  clean in general. But this story is very different.
• 34:55
  It's a very, I'd say, kind of emotional story,
• 34:57
  because it's very hard to be unaffected when
• 35:00
  you read the people's descriptions of their kids
• 35:02
  or what they saw when they arrived at school.
• 35:04
  So that's our contribution to it. And yeah, it
• 35:09
  also leads to questions about intentionality
• 35:13
  or lack thereof in the attack, because one thing
• 35:17
  that became clear from reconstructing it is that
• 35:20
  this wasn't one missile that hit the school.
• 35:22
  This was nine missiles that hit the school
• 35:24
  in total over the course of three hours, or the
• 35:26
  school or the vicinity of the school. So
• 35:29
  whatever they were striking there, they
• 35:32
  knew they were striking something at those coordinates.
• 35:36
  And the experience of people who were there was
• 35:38
  not that it was just a stray missile.
• 35:40
  It was that this school area was being pounded
• 35:44
  by Tomahawk missiles in and around the area
• 35:47
  for hours, including after first responders arrived
• 35:50
  and so forth. So it raises very serious
• 35:53
  questions. And one thing I always tell
• 35:56
  people is that it's not necessarily intentionality
• 35:58
  would be that somebody specifically ordered a
• 36:00
  school and signed off a school being hit during
• 36:02
  school hours. But if you look at the chronology
• 36:05
  of events before the war, Pete Hegseth, the
• 36:09
  head of the Department of Defense, the Department
• 36:11
  of War, he eliminated the already quite meager
• 36:15
  civilian protection agencies inside the Pentagon
• 36:18
  to prevent things from just like this happening.
• 36:20
  And all throughout the chain of command, and his
• 36:23
  administrative decisions were all kind of pushing
• 36:26
  towards emphasizing lethality, as
• 36:29
  he puts it, and reducing civilian protections.
• 36:31
  So then things like this would inevitably happen
• 36:34
  more. In that sense, I always analogize it to
• 36:37
  saying if I cut someone's brakes in their car
• 36:39
  and then they drove to work that day, maybe they
• 36:41
  drove to work a couple of days and they were
• 36:43
  okay. But then maybe on the third day they hit
• 36:45
  a tree. Maybe I didn't make them hit the tree,
• 36:47
  but I created a situation where it would be very
• 36:49
  foreseeable that that would happen. I think that's
• 36:51
  exactly what happened in the case of this school.
• 36:54
  You're speaking my language. That was the exact
• 36:58
  same thought. My thought was either it's intentional
• 37:00
  or they set up conditions to make this particular
• 37:04
  situation happen. It was infinitely foreseeable,
• 37:06
  right? And as you point out, he's screaming
• 37:09
  about lethality, even to the point of trying
• 37:12
  to give people testosterone injections because
• 37:15
  he wants to be that much more lethal warfighters.
• 37:17
  Okay, now you've murdered a bunch of children,
• 37:20
  and the response from the state for the longest
• 37:24
  point, as you point out, was kind of, well,
• 37:26
  we don't know if we did that. We're going to do
• 37:28
  investigations. We're going to do blah, blah. And
• 37:30
  then they came out and blamed AI for the error,
• 37:33
  which is... and old maps, right? Yeah, right,
• 37:37
  and Google Maps. They hit this, correct
• 37:40
  me if I'm wrong, with nine missiles. Yeah, not
• 37:45
  all nine directly hit the school, but there's
• 37:47
  a little community around the school with
• 37:49
  a car wash and clinic and things like this.
• 37:52
  And they're all sort of surrounding... so that
• 37:56
  area in total was hit nine times. And the school
• 38:00
  was also hit multiple times, including after
• 38:01
  the first responders arrived. So, yeah, it was
• 38:05
  a triple-tap strike, at least on the school
• 38:07
  itself. And, yeah, that's exactly what they did.
• 38:12
  And we said in the story, it's probably
• 38:14
  the worst single incident of mass killing of
• 38:18
  civilians, specifically children, that we can
• 38:20
  remember in any conflict. Even going back to
• 38:22
  Vietnam, it's hard to remember one particular
• 38:26
  incident where this many children specifically
• 38:28
  were killed. Maybe My Lai, right? Yeah, maybe
• 38:33
  the My Lai massacre, exactly. It's the only thing
• 38:35
  that may come to mind. I'm not sure how many
• 38:37
  children per se were killed, but even if it's
• 38:39
  not children, it's still a huge number of civilians.
• 38:43
  So yeah, that's an unbelievable, just absolutely
• 38:47
  shocking event. There hasn't really...
• 38:52
  One interesting thing that came across in our
• 38:54
  story, we interviewed a lot of former U.S. military
• 38:56
  officials. They told us that if they
• 38:59
  hit these coordinates, CENTCOM would be able
• 39:01
  to tell you literally an hour later after they
• 39:04
  did it. There's no ambiguity about whether they
• 39:06
  did it. But first, they lied about it. They said
• 39:08
  maybe it was an Iranian missile. Then the footage
• 39:11
  came out. We just saw the Tomahawk missiles, which
• 39:13
  Iran doesn't have, hitting the school repeatedly.
• 39:15
  And then they've just been saying constantly
• 39:18
  since then that they're investigating it. CENTCOM
• 39:20
  chief Brad Cooper, he told a reporter there was
• 39:23
  an active IRGC missile base that they were firing
• 39:26
  at. That's not true. There's no missile base
• 39:29
  at that school compound. But
• 39:34
  the thing is, and going back to the point
• 39:36
  of how this happened, we talked to
• 39:38
  the Iranian government. There was at one point
• 39:40
  an IRGC naval office located in this compound,
• 39:43
  and they had showed us the title deeds of the
• 39:45
  buildings in the area. There was one there at
• 39:48
  some point, but they moved it because they didn't
• 39:51
  want it to become a target in the case of a war,
• 39:54
  such that it would hit the school. And the school's
• 39:57
  location had been known for at least a decade
• 39:58
  that it was there. So it seems that what happened,
• 40:02
  most likely in this case as well, too, is that
• 40:04
  at the start of the war, they wanted to do a
• 40:06
  big shock-and-awe campaign and generate lots
• 40:09
  of targets to hit immediately. So Hegseth and
• 40:12
  whoever else, Cooper, they demanded that their
• 40:16
  analysts provide them thousands of targets that
• 40:19
  they could hit in the first couple of hours so
• 40:21
  they could really shock the Iranian system immediately.
• 40:26
  We don't know how much time frame they had to
• 40:28
  revet these targets, but it seems probably
• 40:30
  not that much. So normally what you do before
• 40:33
  you hit these targets, you go through them, you
• 40:35
  make sure they're still valid, because buildings
• 40:38
  can change, locations can change, things like
• 40:41
  that. It seems they probably didn't vet
• 40:44
  these targets. They probably didn't vet the school
• 40:46
  again, because it's very obviously a school. You
• 40:47
  can actually find the school on Google Maps,
• 40:49
  too. It was not even a
• 40:53
  very deep-cover thing or anything. You look on
• 40:55
  Google Maps in Iran, it would show up on those coordinates.
• 40:57
  So I guess they didn't vet that again
• 41:01
  because they didn't have time and they didn't
• 41:02
  prioritize it. And as I said, they also eliminated
• 41:05
  some of the civilian protection agencies in the
• 41:07
  Pentagon that may have done something like that.
• 41:09
  So, yeah. So then they just hit all the targets
• 41:12
  that they had. And then guess what? One of them
• 41:14
  was an elementary school. One thing that
• 41:20
  I have a lot of questions about this,
• 41:22
  but the big one to me is that we have
• 41:25
  all these drones. The U.S. military does. And
• 41:27
  normally, my understanding is that before a target
• 41:31
  like this is struck, the drones spend days, maybe
• 41:34
  even weeks, before a launch of a strike like this.
• 41:39
  And then they're feeding constant
• 41:41
  24-7 high-quality
• 41:46
  camera footage back to a trailer in Nevada or whatever.
• 41:49
  So they're observing what it is, and
• 41:53
  it's hard for me to believe that anybody
• 41:56
  observing this, even if they're not really particularly
• 41:59
  well trained, wouldn't be able to identify things
• 42:03
  like teachers arriving early in the morning to
• 42:06
  school, parents dropping their kids
• 42:09
  off to school, kids walking in and out of school
• 42:12
  at certain hours, leaving for lunch.
• 42:15
  Okay, so the maps are old. I get that. It's inexcusable.
• 42:20
  But I get it. I don't get, didn't they observe
• 42:24
  the target beforehand? That's a two-part question.
• 42:27
  And the other thing is, Iran has a major problem
• 42:29
  with Mossad and Israeli agents, right? They constantly
• 42:34
  are fighting this issue. They could have had,
• 42:37
  why didn't they have one of their Israeli
• 42:39
  traitors, basically, go and case the joint
• 42:44
  before they bombed it? Well, the Iranian
• 42:49
  interpretation is that it was done intentionally
• 42:51
  for all the reasons that you mentioned, that
• 42:53
  if they have such good intelligence, they could
• 42:56
  locate specific individuals inside the country
• 42:59
  and kill them. How could you possibly hit a school
• 43:03
  full of kids and teachers and so forth in the
• 43:07
  middle of a school day? So that's the way many
• 43:10
  of them feel about it. The way that these targeting
• 43:14
  practices work, my understanding is that there
• 43:16
  are some targets that are heavily surveilled
• 43:19
  and tracked in these ways, or they use signals
• 43:22
  intelligence and so forth to identify certain
• 43:25
  individuals or certain targets. But it's not
• 43:27
  necessarily how they always do it. A lot of it
• 43:30
  is done by satellite imagery. So the satellite
• 43:33
  imagery probably generates the bulk of the targets
• 43:35
  that are hit in a country, and these are big
• 43:38
  stationary targets that they think they're hitting,
• 43:39
  at least on paper, naval bases and military
• 43:42
  bases. So you don't necessarily need to be over
• 43:44
  them all the time to see what's going on. You
• 43:46
  do probably need to update your imagery and so
• 43:49
  forth periodically, because as I said, the use
• 43:52
  of the building changes over time.
• 43:55
  Most buildings, they may turn over their purpose
• 43:58
  or the ownership and so forth. So it seems
• 44:00
  in this case it was likely. Who we spoke to indicated
• 44:03
  that it was likely that satellite imagery was
• 44:05
  used. But even, there's been other
• 44:08
  reconstruction of the attack, I think by UK
• 44:11
  Channel 4 as well, too. There was imagery of
• 44:15
  this site that actually showed for many, many
• 44:17
  years it was a school, including shadows of the
• 44:20
  children standing in the courtyard of the school,
• 44:22
  very clear granular information like that.
• 44:26
  Also, if you were to Google, again, the school had
• 44:30
  a pretty big online presence, so you could see
• 44:32
  the kids at that location doing activities,
• 44:36
  doing sports, painting, drawing, normal things
• 44:39
  kids would do. There must have been a playground.
• 44:42
  There was a playground, which is very visible,
• 44:44
  including on the satellite imagery. So
• 44:48
  I would say that it's very hard to imagine how
• 44:51
  it happened other than either people didn't care
• 44:53
  or some people think they did it intentionally
• 44:56
  or something like that. And I think that the
• 44:59
  major issue also is that if you look at the
• 45:02
  command climate, which has been created by the
• 45:04
  leaders of the Pentagon and so forth, as you
• 45:07
  mentioned, they are talking about lethality all
• 45:09
  the time, and they're saying that they abolished
• 45:11
  some of the civilian protection agencies, indicating
• 45:13
  the laws of war are irrelevant and woke or something.
• 45:18
  That's the message clearly being given by the
• 45:21
  leadership. And even if not everyone in the military
• 45:23
  agrees with that, it inevitably influences
• 45:27
  people and their behavior and conduct further
• 45:29
  down the chain, because that's your leadership,
• 45:31
  and you take your cue from your leadership. And
• 45:34
  even if you don't want to kill civilians or children
• 45:37
  in the school, it's been clearly indicated that
• 45:40
  you won't be punished for that, at minimum, if
• 45:42
  it happens. It's not like they're looking
• 45:44
  for people to punish for things like that. So
• 45:46
  you would take less care to avoid it in any case,
• 45:49
  inevitably, or some people will do that. So I think
• 45:52
  that these things are all contributing to creating
• 45:54
  circumstances where this would happen. And even
• 45:57
  still, we're all upset about it. People will
• 45:59
  write these stories. We've got tremendous response.
• 46:01
  We're having this interview. The Pentagon doesn't
• 46:03
  care. The military doesn't care. The U.S. government
• 46:06
  doesn't care. So for what they view it, and their
• 46:10
  perception of it, is it's just an embarrassing
• 46:13
  incident that they're going to deal with by not
• 46:14
  acknowledging it. Maybe at some point they'll
• 46:17
  issue some perfunctory terse statement saying
• 46:20
  X, Y, and Z happened, or there was some glitch.
• 46:22
  Blaming AI, blaming some extraneous factor. I
• 46:25
  really think blaming AI is completely ridiculous
• 46:27
  in this case. AI is a tool used to gather information.
• 46:31
  There's still a human being signing off on all these
• 46:33
  strikes. So, yeah, I think that that's the case.
• 46:37
  And so I don't think people should
• 46:38
  have any other expectation about it. And I do
• 46:40
  hope that people around the world, or people
• 46:42
  in Iran, too, who maybe had a different perception
• 46:45
  of what the intentions of the U.S. government
• 46:47
  were in the war, may look at this as kind of
• 46:50
  a wake-up call that actually there's not
• 46:52
  really this high degree of standard of care for
• 46:54
  civilians, or in this case, Iranian civilians. Yeah,
• 46:57
  whatever liberals that are there in the government,
• 46:59
  or that are there in general, that still
• 47:02
  have this idea that America is coming to save
• 47:04
  us, the Yanks are coming to save us. Nonsense. Nonsense.
• 47:07
  I think they did it on purpose, and I think the
• 47:10
  people who are in Iran who look at it as if
• 47:12
  they did it on purpose should accept it as that.
• 47:15
  You murdered a bunch of kids, for God's sake.
• 47:18
  What is the government going to do in regards
• 47:21
  to dealing with the deaths of all of these people?
• 47:26
  Or does the government get involved in situations
• 47:28
  like this, meaning dealing with the outcome,
• 47:30
  the repercussions of the deaths of all of these
• 47:33
  kids and the damage done to all of the parents?
• 47:36
  Or is that just something that the parents have
• 47:38
  to accept? Does the government get involved in
• 47:43
  helping after, while they're fighting a war,
• 47:46
  right? Yeah, well, we spoke to some
• 47:49
  local authorities there, and they're doing
• 47:51
  the things that you might expect after a school
• 47:53
  shooting in America. They're giving psychologists
• 47:55
  and so forth to the kids and to the parents.
• 47:59
  But after something like this
• 48:01
  happens, what can you... what psychologists,
• 48:04
  in my opinion, what can they even say at
• 48:06
  this point? But they're trying to
• 48:08
  have a rally around it as a cultural issue and
• 48:12
  giving this type of support. And we
• 48:13
  did speak to some psychologists. The things they
• 48:16
  told us were really harrowing, because a lot of
• 48:19
  the kids... first of all, a lot of the parents,
• 48:21
  they never got the full bodies of their kids
• 48:23
  back because they were basically ripped apart
• 48:24
  by the bombs. So all they got was a foot with
• 48:28
  a sock on it that had the SpongeBob sock, and
• 48:30
  they knew they put the SpongeBob sock on their
• 48:32
  kid that day. Or they got a backpack, and the
• 48:35
  backpack had a sandwich in it that was uneaten,
• 48:38
  and the mom knew that she made that sandwich
• 48:40
  for that backpack that day, and that's kind of
• 48:42
  all they have. So that's... and there's
• 48:44
  even one or two kids nothing has been found yet,
• 48:46
  so they're still looking and trying to give the
• 48:48
  parents something to hold on to. A lot of kids'
• 48:51
  parents have been talking to the inanimate objects
• 48:53
  of the kid and just talking to them
• 48:56
  as though the kid was there, that type of
• 48:58
  thing. And a lot of the kids who survived, they
• 49:00
  feel survivors' guilt. These are
• 49:02
  seven-year-old kids. Some of them have been
• 49:04
  burning themselves with a lighter so they can feel
• 49:07
  the burning that their friends felt before they
• 49:09
  died. Some of them are still afraid
• 49:12
  that the American government is going to come
• 49:14
  back and kill them again. And some of them actually
• 49:16
  told the psychologists that they believe that
• 49:19
  not only was the attack intentional, but the
• 49:20
  goal of the war was to kill all the kids in that
• 49:23
  school, and the war will not end until the U.S.
• 49:25
  military comes and kills every kid who was
• 49:28
  at Shajareh Tayyebeh that day, and then that's the
• 49:31
  purpose of the conflict. That's the way the kids
• 49:32
  are interpreting it, because it's an unbelievably
• 49:35
  traumatic incident. And also, some of the parents
• 49:38
  whose kids were killed, they're
• 49:42
  telling the teachers, why didn't you
• 49:44
  save my kid? I thought you said that
• 49:46
  my kid was just like your kid, and then why is
• 49:48
  my kid dead? Obviously, the teacher, what can
• 49:50
  you even say to that? They didn't know what to
• 49:52
  do, or that a missile was going to hit the school
• 49:54
  that day. So all those types of psychological
• 49:56
  impacts have been very, very pronounced. And
• 49:58
  all the first responders, too, because we interviewed
• 50:01
  a lot of them. What they told us was very harrowing.
• 50:03
  They arrived right after the bombs hit. They
• 50:05
  just said they came to the school, which they
• 50:07
  were very familiar with, and then just the yard
• 50:09
  was full of the body parts of the kids who they
• 50:12
  knew. And then their hands, they were digging
• 50:14
  through them. Nails were filled with the brains
• 50:17
  of the kids, and they wouldn't come out with the
• 50:18
  showering and things like that. So
• 50:21
  it's just a psychological impact in the town,
• 50:23
  which is a pretty small town, to be honest, has
• 50:25
  been devastating. And the government is trying
• 50:28
  to pursue legal action, international courts,
• 50:31
  international law. I think they're realistic,
• 50:33
  though, in the sense that there's not really
• 50:35
  much that these institutions can really do to
• 50:37
  the U.S. government. And the U.S. has been
• 50:39
  dismantling the ICC right now because
• 50:42
  they tried to prosecute Netanyahu. It seems to be the
• 50:44
  motivation. So even whatever meager protections
• 50:46
  did exist, they're trying to undermine them.
• 50:49
  So I think there's more that
• 50:53
  they're just going to have to accept that this happened,
• 50:55
  and there's not much accountability that's likely
• 50:57
  to be forthcoming. And I do think at some point,
• 51:00
  maybe years on the line or whatever, the U.S. will issue
• 51:02
  some statement about it, but it's just going to
• 51:04
  be perfunctory, and it's just going to be another
• 51:07
  unhappy understanding, this episode
• 51:10
  in the relationship between Iran and the U.S.
• 51:13
  that maybe they'll try to take revenge for one
• 51:16
  day. Maybe that'll be... little military operations
• 51:18
  have been waged in the name of the kids at the
• 51:21
  school and things like that. Maybe that'll be
• 51:23
  the way they frame it. But when you're
• 51:25
  a weaker country against a more powerful country,
• 51:27
  your avenues for redress have always
• 51:31
  been limited throughout history, unfortunately.
• 51:35
  Is it fair to assume that the U.S. government
• 51:38
  knew within, let's just say, hours exactly what
• 51:43
  happened and how it went down, and that there
• 51:45
  was no mystery here whatsoever, and that there
• 51:48
  is not really a real investigation, and that
• 51:51
  everything that's right now, they're just dragging
• 51:53
  their feet and stalling for time and
• 51:57
  hoping that everybody forgets about this?
• 52:01
  I always have to say absolutely, because
• 52:04
  look, the first thing they did when the report
• 52:07
  of the school came out being hit was lie about
• 52:09
  it. They said that the Iranians hit it. It wasn't
• 52:12
  another government which revealed that wasn't
• 52:14
  the case. It was just ordinary reporters and
• 52:16
  open-source researchers who viewed the video
• 52:21
  footage that was recovered from the town that
• 52:24
  identified the munitions as being American munitions.
• 52:27
  So the Tomahawk missile is a very exquisite
• 52:30
  system that you could describe as expensive and
• 52:33
  unique. The Iranians don't operate it.
• 52:36
  Only the U.S. and U.S. allies operate it. So that
• 52:38
  was the first response, which is completely wrong.
• 52:40
  Secondly, as we mentioned, we spoke to some former
• 52:43
  people in the DOD, told us that, look, they could
• 52:48
  tell you immediately if they hit those coordinates.
• 52:50
  So that's not a mystery. As soon as it happens,
• 52:54
  they can tell you if someone punched in
• 52:56
  those coordinates, if they were struck. They never
• 52:59
  really followed up about that. They could do
• 53:01
  it within an hour. It's been eight months. They
• 53:03
  haven't done that. So that's another data point.
• 53:06
  And then they've continued lying about it since
• 53:08
  then. After they revealed that, they said, well,
• 53:10
  that's not what was there, or we're looking into
• 53:13
  it. Or Trump, the commander in chief, has said
• 53:16
  repeatedly he doesn't care. He said that. Why
• 53:19
  are you still asking me about this? He's indicated
• 53:22
  it's not a priority. It's not something that
• 53:24
  is there, something that they give any consideration
• 53:27
  to. So that's another aspect of it. So these
• 53:30
  things all kind of accumulate a little bit. So
• 53:32
  I will say also that everyone who's found out
• 53:35
  about what happened there has been reporters.
• 53:37
  And The New York Times maybe has some resources.
• 53:40
  Drop Site, I tell you, has way less budget than
• 53:42
  the Department of Defense. I think they're asking
• 53:44
  for a $1.5 trillion budget. Our budget is, suffice
• 53:47
  to say, infinitely less than that. We were able
• 53:51
  to reconstruct all this. It shows that
• 53:55
  they're obviously not devoting their tremendous
• 53:56
  resources to doing it, because it's not something
• 53:58
  which they care about. It's an embarrassment,
• 54:01
  and it's embarrassment to their narrative of
• 54:03
  the situation. And they're dealing with embarrassment
• 54:05
  by trying to be silent and hoping it goes away,
• 54:08
  trying to think of some sort of mitigating PR
• 54:11
  narrative, maybe blaming AI and so forth, diffusing
• 54:14
  the conversation entirely to that subject. That's
• 54:17
  how they're going to deal with it. But
• 54:18
  I would say this is a stain which will stay on
• 54:21
  CENTCOM indefinitely. It's just like the My Lai
• 54:23
  massacre we still talk about. Yeah, the Minab
• 54:25
  massacre is of that scale, undoubtedly. And
• 54:29
  that's exactly what's going to happen.
• 54:32
  And there are also other massacres
• 54:34
  that took place on the same day in southern Iran.
• 54:37
  We might do some stories about that, too. There
• 54:38
  was a girls' volleyball practice not far from
• 54:41
  there in a town called Lamerd, which was
• 54:43
  hit by another Tomahawk. No, it wasn't by Tomahawk.
• 54:46
  It was hit by a PrSM missile, which is an experimental
• 54:49
  missile which explodes above the target and then
• 54:51
  dislodges tens of thousands of pieces
• 54:56
  of tungsten or shrapnel. And they totally ripped
• 54:59
  apart the girls at this volleyball practice.
• 55:01
  And some of the survivors, I think about 18 people
• 55:03
  were killed, but some of the survivors were blinded.
• 55:06
  Their innards were ripped out by the
• 55:09
  missile. So that also happened on the same day.
• 55:11
  And they lied about that, too. They said it was
• 55:13
  an Iranian missile again, even though we have
• 55:15
  the footage and the aftermath of that bombing
• 55:18
  as well. So there's lying in the sense that anyone
• 55:22
  you would expect any quote-unquote
• 55:24
  authoritarian government to lie. Yeah, that's
• 55:26
  what they're doing about all this. And we're
• 55:28
  piecing together with minimal resources what
• 55:30
  happened as journalists and other outlets there
• 55:32
  as well. But they have all the data
• 55:35
  because they know what they did, and they're not
• 55:36
  putting it out. So that kind of speaks, kind
• 55:39
  of tells you what it is in and of itself. They
• 55:42
  clearly knew that they did it.
• 55:46
  Come on. This wasn't even... the U.S.
• 55:51
  was attacking Iran. A bunch of people died
• 55:53
  in the school. Why would Iran hit its own school,
• 55:56
  right? Iran is going to be firing missiles at
• 55:58
  bases that are in other countries, not at its
• 56:01
  own. It made no sense from the very beginning.
• 56:05
  It's like Russia blew up its own pipeline. It
• 56:07
  was always nonsense. You think they're embarrassed.
• 56:11
  I don't think they're embarrassed. I don't think
• 56:13
  they care one way or the other. Yeah, well,
• 56:16
  I don't think they care a percent. And
• 56:18
  that's the inference I get from their actions
• 56:20
  and words. But also, there's
• 56:24
  a desire to put forward a pristine narrative
• 56:28
  of their motivations and their actions in these
• 56:31
  conflicts to the public, the global public, also
• 56:35
  to the people inside the institution. Nobody
• 56:38
  likes to be, Brad Cooper at one
• 56:41
  of these testimonies, a reporter for Channel
• 56:44
  4 who was reporting on the Minab massacre, as
• 56:46
  she was yelling at him and calling out to him,
• 56:48
  and he just kind of darted off. I think they prefer
• 56:50
  to be just lauded as heroes and have a pristine
• 56:53
  record of what they did in the conflict. This
• 56:55
  war is very unpopular among Americans. It's probably
• 56:57
  the most unpopular war that's been
• 57:01
  recorded in the last century. The Vietnam War
• 57:05
  took years to reach this level of unpopularity
• 57:07
  that the Iran war hit almost immediately. And
• 57:10
  I don't think most Americans really
• 57:13
  want their tax dollars to be used to kill children
• 57:16
  in a girls' elementary school around the world
• 57:19
  in a conflict that has nothing to do with them
• 57:20
  and that's been harming their interests,
• 57:23
  on that anyways. So I think these
• 57:25
  things all add up, and I do think it's upon
• 57:27
  the American public to a degree also. We're
• 57:30
  giving the information about what's going on
• 57:32
  here, and then they can do something with that
• 57:34
  when they protest or vote or so forth. But
• 57:38
  it should be entered in the historical
• 57:40
  record, and people can do what they want with
• 57:41
  it. And the historical record of this war, I think,
• 57:43
  will be unfavorable. It will show it was an unpopular
• 57:46
  war of aggression that was fought, didn't achieve
• 57:50
  its goals, killed a huge number of civilians,
• 57:52
  and committed, as I said, the single worst individual
• 57:56
  incident of a U.S. war crime in many, many decades.
• 58:02
  So I'm glad you brought it up, and I feel like
• 58:05
  that is a good place to sort of end it. But,
• 58:07
  as a last question, Murtaza,
• 58:09
  I was five years old when the My Lai massacre
• 58:12
  happened. And nevertheless, I remember its aftermath
• 58:16
  because it was in the newspaper and on national
• 58:19
  television for years. There were congressional
• 58:23
  hearings. The media, which was, of course, a
• 58:26
  lot more robust at the time, kept after this
• 58:30
  story. There were dissidents within the Army
• 58:33
  who kept stepping forward. It was a slow,
• 58:38
  constant burn. And until Lieutenant Calley was
• 58:42
  held responsible, and we can... it's
• 58:45
  a different story as to whether that was enough
• 58:47
  or not. But anyway, until his trial,
• 58:50
  basically the story just didn't go away. I wonder
• 58:54
  how many Americans even know that the
• 58:59
  Minab massacre even happened. And if you walked
• 59:02
  into a mall in Paramus, New Jersey, and asked
• 59:06
  a thousand people, what was the Minab
• 59:09
  massacre? How many would be able to answer that
• 59:11
  question? Yeah, Ted, this is something.
• 59:15
  It's kind of a disturbing sort of development,
• 59:18
  because I remember the Iraq War in
• 59:20
  2003, and I was probably a teenager at that time,
• 59:23
  but there was a tremendous public
• 59:26
  debate prior to the launching of the Iraq War.
• 59:29
  And obviously it's remembered rightly as a complete...
• 59:32
  there was lying, and it was sophistry,
• 59:37
  and there was just fabrications. It was seen
• 59:40
  as a very shameful episode, the fact that the
• 59:43
  war started on false pretenses. But there was
• 59:46
  at least a discussion about it, and there were
• 59:48
  huge protests about it. People were talking about
• 59:51
  it, pro and against. The government felt it had
• 59:53
  to make a case about the war one way or another,
• 59:56
  even if it was a false case. In this case, the
• 59:58
  war was just started without any discussion,
• 1:00:01
  without any public debate, without much public
• 1:00:04
  response for the most part. There weren't really
• 1:00:06
  huge anti-war protests. There weren't pro-war
• 1:00:08
  protests. It just was an elite-driven exercise
• 1:00:11
  entirely. And it's continued as an elite-driven
• 1:00:14
  exercise entirely. If it wasn't for inflation
• 1:00:16
  and gas prices, I don't think people would notice
• 1:00:18
  the war's going on at all for the most part. I
• 1:00:21
  think that speaks to a shift in the American
• 1:00:23
  public, which has somehow been sterilized or
• 1:00:26
  something in the course of the past few decades.
• 1:00:29
  There's not the raucous public response to...
• 1:00:32
  maybe there's this exhaustion, or maybe people,
• 1:00:34
  after the Gaza protests were kind of suppressed.
• 1:00:37
  The people who would protest have
• 1:00:39
  been kind of chastened now, maybe. And
• 1:00:42
  the discussion of the course of the war, or how
• 1:00:45
  it came about, or the justifications for what's
• 1:00:47
  happened during it, incidents like Minab. Yeah,
• 1:00:50
  as you said, there's not been a public sphere
• 1:00:52
  that is seemingly very activated to talk about
• 1:00:55
  these things. I think it may... it could be
• 1:00:57
  broader than the conversation of this show, but
• 1:00:59
  maybe these changes in the technological environment,
• 1:01:01
  atomization, the fragmentation of attention, and
• 1:01:05
  so forth, have all corresponded to sort of
• 1:01:09
  dissolve the shared public sphere that maybe
• 1:01:12
  we had inhabited to a greater degree before, such
• 1:01:14
  that some people in society are very aware of
• 1:01:17
  the Minab incident, or among other incidents, and
• 1:01:19
  some people could not even tell you in a million
• 1:01:21
  years even that the war is going on, for the most
• 1:01:24
  part. That's very possible. I think so.
• 1:01:27
  I don't know. I thought about the same thing.
• 1:01:30
  There's a lot of reasons that could be. I think
• 1:01:33
  that if most people knew about it, I think their
• 1:01:35
  natural human inclination would be to recoil
• 1:01:37
  from it and demand accountability. But as you
• 1:01:39
  said, I think most people don't know about it.
• 1:01:41
  The establishment media, so to speak, I can't
• 1:01:45
  say that they haven't covered it at all. They
• 1:01:47
  have covered it a little bit. They probably haven't
• 1:01:49
  given it the level of coverage that the My Lai
• 1:01:51
  massacre had, which was covered every single
• 1:01:53
  day. I don't know. They had reporters
• 1:01:58
  in Vietnam, embedded reporters, right? Right.
• 1:02:01
  Yeah. And nothing happened like these publications,
• 1:02:03
  which, for the most part, are commanding
• 1:02:05
  a decreasing share of public attention. So this
• 1:02:08
  fragmentation is happening a lot. But
• 1:02:10
  the foreign bureaus don't really exist anymore,
• 1:02:12
  for the most part. They've been dissolved or scaled
• 1:02:15
  down tremendously. So that's another aspect of
• 1:02:17
  it. So yeah, it's unfortunate. And I think it speaks
• 1:02:20
  to foreign policy in general just becoming a
• 1:02:23
  function of the executive branch, and the public
• 1:02:26
  is decreasingly involved in it, absent a draft
• 1:02:31
  or something like that, which doesn't seem likely
• 1:02:33
  in the near future. Yeah. Murtaza, thank you so
• 1:02:36
  much for joining us. Murtaza Hussain is the
• 1:02:39
  senior national security and foreign affairs
• 1:02:41
  journalist at Drop Site News. He's a co-author
• 1:02:43
  of a major reporting piece called Behind
• 1:02:47
  the Minab Massacre. So go to Drop Site News,
• 1:02:52
  check that out. It's a long, painful read, but I
• 1:02:56
  think we all have a responsibility to know what
• 1:02:58
  happened. And thank you very much, and look
• 1:03:01
  forward to speaking to you again soon. Thank you,
• 1:03:04
  guys. Thanks, man. So we should, let's see, go
• 1:03:08
  through and see if we have any comments to talk
• 1:03:10
  about here. Thanks very much to Ray for
• 1:03:14
  the five dollars. O'Brien37, to beam up, we need
• 1:03:17
  to get off this rock. Have a good day, everyone.
• 1:03:20
  Thank you very much for that. And there was
• 1:03:24
  a previous comment that was a little more lighthearted
• 1:03:28
  than what we just spent the last half hour talking
• 1:03:30
  about. But if you saw... irrelevant question. I
• 1:03:35
  have a leaky toilet. Does anyone know of a good
• 1:03:37
  plumber? Huge bonus if he could fly a commercial
• 1:03:39
  plane, too. I don't know if you saw the latest
• 1:03:43
  Iranian Lego video lampooning the narrative about
• 1:03:48
  the flydubai incident. flydubai, by the way,
• 1:03:53
  it's being reported that it wasn't a knife. It
• 1:03:57
  was apparently an axe that the co-pilot brought
• 1:04:00
  on board. Because who doesn't bring their axe
• 1:04:04
  on board? And my first question was, well,
• 1:04:09
  how did they get a knife on board? Well, a knife
• 1:04:13
  is hard, but an axe, everybody brings their axe.
• 1:04:16
  Right. That seems even weirder. But I think they
• 1:04:18
  took the axe from the plane. I don't think they
• 1:04:20
  brought it on board. I think they're saying basically,
• 1:04:23
  people were asked, well, how did he get a knife
• 1:04:26
  on board? And it was, well, wait, it wasn't
• 1:04:27
  a knife. It was an axe. There was an axe on the
• 1:04:29
  plane. So it's used in case of emergencies
• 1:04:33
  or whatever. Yeah. As emergency equipment. And
• 1:04:36
  they took the axe and used the axe. Gotcha. Which
• 1:04:40
  is even weirder. It's like, how is he swinging
• 1:04:42
  an axe in a cockpit? Yeah. There's not a lot
• 1:04:45
  of room in there if you've ever been in there.
• 1:04:47
  Or you can just look. You can look inside and
• 1:04:49
  see there's not a lot of room to swing around.
• 1:04:53
  Of course, yeah, the idea that, by the
• 1:04:57
  way, did you hear this? The hero Israeli plumber
• 1:05:00
  who supposedly leveled the plane out. So he claimed
• 1:05:05
  that he... you're laughing already because you
• 1:05:09
  know what I'm going to say. He claimed he was
• 1:05:11
  watching some TV. He was a fan of some TV show
• 1:05:15
  about air disasters, and that from watching this
• 1:05:18
  TV show, he knew what to do, that basically after
• 1:05:22
  the plane plunged from 34 to 17,000 feet in
• 1:05:29
  29 seconds. And by the way, there was an expert
• 1:05:34
  on CNN who said that if that were true, that
• 1:05:37
  the plane had dropped that quickly, it would
• 1:05:39
  have disintegrated. And also, there's just so
• 1:05:45
  many things here that just don't make
• 1:05:47
  a lot of sense. Also, the rudders were shorn
• 1:05:51
  off. So how were they able to stabilize the plane
• 1:05:54
  in order to bring it in for a landing? But anyway,
• 1:05:57
  the point is some Israeli guy bursts in. So the
• 1:06:00
  one thing that's being doubted, I kind of don't
• 1:06:03
  doubt, which is the Iranian guy, the Indian pilot,
• 1:06:07
  after the attack was able to open the door. I
• 1:06:10
  believe that. I'm like, sure. People have...
• 1:06:14
  they're not just dead instantaneously. They have
• 1:06:16
  energy, and probably he was highly motivated to
• 1:06:19
  open that door. Okay, I get that. So then the Israeli
• 1:06:23
  dude, the plumber, comes in and pulls the
• 1:06:27
  thing up. Now, apparently it takes tremendous steady
• 1:06:30
  pressure to do that in a situation like that,
• 1:06:33
  to level the plane out. And then I guess then
• 1:06:36
  we have the Kumbaya Russian-Ukrainian co-pilots
• 1:06:38
  who come in and finish the job and bring the
• 1:06:41
  plane in for a landing. I don't know.
• 1:06:46
  I don't know. I don't know if I believe the plumber
• 1:06:49
  who watched it all on a YouTube
• 1:06:52
  how-to video, how to land a commercial
• 1:06:56
  plane. Every Israeli can land a plane.
• 1:07:00
  Every Israeli can land a plane, right? He's the everyman that
• 1:07:04
  can just go in and just pull. I knew a guy who
• 1:07:07
  was an air traffic controller in Ohio, civil
• 1:07:11
  aviation, right? And he told me this terrible
• 1:07:15
  story about this guy who was... they got
• 1:07:18
  a call, and he's like, I'm in a Cessna,
• 1:07:21
  and the pilot, he just had a heart attack, and
• 1:07:25
  he's out, he's gone, and I don't know how to
• 1:07:27
  fly the plane. And he's not the co-
• 1:07:30
  pilot. He's a passenger. He's just sitting next
• 1:07:32
  to the guy. And so he tried to keep
• 1:07:37
  the guy calm and say, I'm going to teach you
• 1:07:40
  how to land the plane. He couldn't land the plane.
• 1:07:43
  The dude crashed. And that's a really simple
• 1:07:46
  plane, right? I have flown one of those
• 1:07:50
  planes a little bit, and it's simple.
• 1:07:53
  There's not a lot to it, really. This is far
• 1:07:58
  more complex. And
• 1:08:00
  there was no word that an air traffic controller
• 1:08:02
  would say, look for the orange dial, look for,
• 1:08:06
  that's your altimeter, or
• 1:08:08
  what I mean? He did it all on his
• 1:08:10
  own. I'm like, just from having watched the TV
• 1:08:12
  show. He's an Israeli plumber, Ted, of
• 1:08:14
  course he could land it. And by the way, if
• 1:08:19
  he was an Israeli plumber in charge of the national
• 1:08:21
  debt, we'd be okay. And keep in mind, the fighting
• 1:08:24
  apparently is taking place as they're falling.
• 1:08:27
  So they're fighting in zero-G. Yeah. So
• 1:08:30
  apparently it was a full, at least one full G.
• 1:08:33
  Right. And that... oh, so that's the thing, too.
• 1:08:36
  Right. So while they're supposedly moving toward
• 1:08:38
  the cockpit, by all accounts, you would be, yeah,
• 1:08:42
  effectively zero-G. Your feet are off the ground.
• 1:08:44
  You're literally... you're fighting in zero-G. I
• 1:08:48
  was in an incident when I was 16 years old. I
• 1:08:50
  was flying to Reykjavik, Iceland, with my mom.
• 1:08:54
  And the plane lost about 7,000
• 1:09:00
  feet of altitude all of a sudden. And let me
• 1:09:04
  just say it was a hot mess. Okay. Everybody who
• 1:09:08
  wasn't buckled in went straight to the ceiling.
• 1:09:10
  People were covered with blood. People lost
• 1:09:14
  teeth. They broke their noses. People had their
• 1:09:17
  glasses break out into their eyes. They lost their
• 1:09:20
  sight. I'd say probably a third to
• 1:09:25
  a quarter of the passengers had significant
• 1:09:28
  injuries that required them being hospitalized.
• 1:09:31
  And then the rest of us were all
• 1:09:34
  bruised and beaten up, right? We all
• 1:09:37
  thought we were going to die. If you saw the
• 1:09:39
  plane afterwards, right, there's shit all over
• 1:09:42
  the... literally there's shit and piss
• 1:09:45
  all over the place from people losing,
• 1:09:47
  evacuating their bowels. There's blood smears
• 1:09:51
  all over the place. The oxygen masks have all
• 1:09:54
  been deployed. All the luggage fell out from
• 1:09:57
  the overheads on top of people. The drink cart's
• 1:10:01
  been banging around on the ceiling.
• 1:10:03
  It's basically like God took the plane
• 1:10:06
  and went like that, right? That's what happened in
• 1:10:11
  this flydubai incident was a lot worse. A lot.
• 1:10:16
  By the way, and they were fighting as this was
• 1:10:19
  supposedly taking place. Yeah. It's like
• 1:10:23
  an action movie, like Air Force
• 1:10:25
  One, where Harrison Ford is hanging off the back
• 1:10:27
  of the plane. Come on. Yeah. It just sounds
• 1:10:30
  a bit much. It just sounds a bit much. And then
• 1:10:34
  you get the Kumbaya scene at the end with the
• 1:10:36
  Ukrainian and Russian joining hands and
• 1:10:38
  landing the plane. Okay. Okay. We're all... all
• 1:10:42
  of us Jews have to stick together. Yeah. And
• 1:10:46
  then Bibi's like, come here, big guy. Yeah. Oh,
• 1:10:50
  it's crazy. Yeah, I don't know what really
• 1:10:53
  happened, but I know that it's not exactly the
• 1:10:56
  tale we've been told. Okay, I'm in wait-and-see
• 1:11:01
  mode. Anyway, thanks, Jamarl, for doing this this
• 1:11:03
  morning. Thank you to Murtaza Hussain for joining
• 1:11:06
  us from Drop Site News. Thank you all for your
• 1:11:08
  support. Please have a great weekend. We'll be
• 1:11:11
  back Monday for the regular two-hour show on
• 1:11:13
  Monday, 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Eastern time. Thank
• 1:11:18
  you to producer Robby West. We'll see you then.
• 1:11:20
  Thank you to Trent for arranging this interview.
• 1:11:24
  And anyway, enjoy a beautiful fall day wherever
• 1:11:27
  you are. Or if you're in the Southern Hemisphere,
• 1:11:29
  I guess it's a spring day. All right. Bye, all. Have
• 1:11:33
  a good one, guys. Ciao.