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Abby Martin: The US military machine is destroying our planet · The Real News Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: We're here in the Real News Network studio in downtown Baltimore,
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Speaker 1: and I could not be more excited to have legendary
0:07
Speaker 1: independent journalist and filmmaker, the one and only Abby Martin
0:11
Speaker 1: here with me in person. Now some of you may
0:15
Speaker 1: not know this, but Abby is actually a Real News
0:18
Speaker 1: alumnus and sister Abby. I know it's been a minute
0:22
Speaker 1: since you've been back here in your old stomping grounds,
0:24
Speaker 1: but I just wanted to start by saying on behalf
0:27
Speaker 1: of the entire team here, welcome back to Baltimore. Congratulations
0:33
Speaker 1: on all the incredible essential work that you've done, and
0:37
Speaker 1: we are all just so proud of you and so
0:40
Speaker 1: honored to be in this struggle for truth with you.
0:42
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, Well, the feelings more than mutual, Max,
0:45
Speaker 2: I mean, just being here back in the studio, it
0:47
Speaker 2: just brings me back to just the origins of Empire Files,
0:51
Speaker 2: you know, being in the Real News studio working all
0:53
Speaker 2: hours the night, trying to knock out those weekly documentaries,
0:56
Speaker 2: and it was just such a cool crew to be
0:59
Speaker 2: a part of.
1:00
Speaker 3: And it's so amazing to be back well.
1:02
Speaker 1: And what an incredible journey you and the Empire Files
1:06
Speaker 1: have been on since then, and you know, we are
1:09
Speaker 1: of course here today to talk about your blockbuster new documentary,
1:17
Speaker 1: Earth's Greatest Enemy, which is an engrossing, expansive, and frankly
1:24
Speaker 1: terrifying investigation into the existential threat that US Empire in
1:32
Speaker 1: general and the US military specifically pose to humanity and
1:37
Speaker 1: to our planet. Now, I know that this project was
1:41
Speaker 1: years in the making, and you know, projects of this
1:45
Speaker 1: magnitude can often start as one thing and then become
1:49
Speaker 1: something much greater by the end of it, And so
1:51
Speaker 1: I wanted to start by asking, like, what is this documentary?
1:57
Speaker 1: Where did it start, and what did it be come
2:00
Speaker 1: by the time you and your co director Mike Presner
2:03
Speaker 1: were finished.
2:04
Speaker 2: Wow, it was a long journey indeed, and it was
2:07
Speaker 2: five years in the making, as you mentioned, and it
2:09
Speaker 2: started off during COVID with the birth of our first
2:12
Speaker 2: child and kind of joining our passions together, Mike as
2:17
Speaker 2: an anti imperialist, anti war veteran organizer and me as
2:22
Speaker 2: an anti war journalist who had been advocating against US
2:25
Speaker 2: imperialism my entire career as an advocacy journalist.
2:28
Speaker 3: So I advocate four issues.
2:29
Speaker 2: I wear my bias on my sleeve, and I find
2:31
Speaker 2: it very refreshing in this kind of world of access
2:34
Speaker 2: journalism and corporate media, and so combining those passions together
2:38
Speaker 2: and wanting to approach a subject that tackles the environmental
2:43
Speaker 2: impact of the military because of our obsession with the future,
2:46
Speaker 2: bringing a child into this world, having the responsibility of
2:52
Speaker 2: a trip, you know, of basically investing in the future.
2:55
Speaker 3: It is on our shoulders now we're all in. And
2:58
Speaker 3: so we saw that, but statistic kind of floating around
3:02
Speaker 3: that the US military was the largest institutional polluter in
3:04
Speaker 3: the world. This is something that's been kind of synthesized
3:07
Speaker 3: in academia when you look at just oil purchases, which
3:11
Speaker 3: the US military hadn't even really disclosed until relatively recently.
3:16
Speaker 3: And there's been some scholars who have addressed this in
3:18
Speaker 3: literature and studies, but no one had synthesized it in
3:22
Speaker 3: a cinematic way, certainly in a documentary fashion. But max,
3:27
Speaker 3: once we got into the subject matter, every stone unturned
3:31
Speaker 3: is another documentary, and so we're looking at legacy contamination
3:34
Speaker 3: of just radiation agent orange. And then you look at
3:38
Speaker 3: the expansion of militarism all around the world with these
3:41
Speaker 3: eight hundred bases.
3:42
Speaker 2: Every base is a story. Every victim is another story.
3:45
Speaker 2: And then you add on top of that just the
3:47
Speaker 2: maintenance of the military arsenal, the actual infrastructure of the
3:50
Speaker 2: US military empire, and how the entire thing exists as
3:54
Speaker 2: a self fulfilling prophecy in order to maintain a fossil
3:57
Speaker 2: fuel infrastructure. And it's never been laid bear more with
4:01
Speaker 2: Trump in power, with this kind of imperial belligerence when
4:04
Speaker 2: we see Venezuela greenland. So the documentary took a life
4:08
Speaker 2: of its own and started catapulting in every which way
4:11
Speaker 2: and kind of made us realize.
4:13
Speaker 3: We wanted to prove the thesis here.
4:15
Speaker 2: We wanted to go into it, not just talking about emissions,
4:18
Speaker 2: which is one story in itself which we tackle. We
4:20
Speaker 2: wanted to tackle all of it. We wanted to go
4:22
Speaker 2: into the totality to sit someone down and inject them
4:26
Speaker 2: with the truth. And you cannot walk away without having
4:29
Speaker 2: your brain rewired in terms of the way you look
4:31
Speaker 2: at the military in this country.
4:33
Speaker 1: No, And I could say that as someone who's watched it.
4:37
Speaker 1: It was, like I said, quite terrified by what I
4:40
Speaker 1: was seeing and what you have given us kind of
4:43
Speaker 1: concrete evidence to prove. But I wanted to ask, like,
4:48
Speaker 1: what a kind of a monumental struggle that must have
4:52
Speaker 1: been to first research and then visualize the scope and
4:57
Speaker 1: scale of this problem. Could you just talk about it
5:00
Speaker 1: that for a little bit.
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Speaker 2: I mean, especially when it comes to emissions, because this
5:03
Speaker 2: is something that's been very secretive under the pretense of
5:05
Speaker 2: national security and not disclosed by the US military establishment.
5:10
Speaker 2: So it was unearthing so much data accumulated and synthesized
5:15
Speaker 2: by scientists independently to try to calculate these things based
5:19
Speaker 2: on just oil purchases. And then when you extrapolate that
5:22
Speaker 2: out and look at the life cycle emissions, look at
5:24
Speaker 2: the application of the weaponry, the maintenance of this global
5:27
Speaker 2: supply chain, it totally becomes unquantifiable. And then you wrap
5:31
Speaker 2: into that the actual you know, basically NATO, the machinery
5:36
Speaker 2: of the entire military empire, the Great power competition with China, Russia,
5:40
Speaker 2: all of the building up of those arsenals in response
5:43
Speaker 2: to our aggression and belligerent So it becomes simply unquantifiable,
5:47
Speaker 2: and it was so difficult and max. At a point
5:51
Speaker 2: in the documentary we bring in this philosopher and he
5:54
Speaker 2: says something really really important where he says, numbers numb,
5:58
Speaker 2: and he gives kind of this take on it's so
6:01
Speaker 2: hard to get overwhelmed by the existential nature of US
6:04
Speaker 2: imperialism of capitalism, because it's so far reaching and all inclusive,
6:09
Speaker 2: and all these issues are interconnected, as we're realizing more
6:12
Speaker 2: and more. But numbers, when you're just looking at sheer
6:16
Speaker 2: facts and data, data, data, it can numb you. It
6:20
Speaker 2: can become meaningless. And I think we see that psychologically.
6:24
Speaker 2: I think with the genocide going on for three years straight,
6:28
Speaker 2: the data and the numbers become numbing, and so at
6:32
Speaker 2: a certain point it became more about just the storytelling
6:36
Speaker 2: and the emotion and collaging these narratives together to kind
6:40
Speaker 2: of give people that gut punch that it's not about
6:43
Speaker 2: the numbers. Look, we prove, we proved the thesis over
6:45
Speaker 2: and over again. That's done. But I think what really
6:49
Speaker 2: hits people seeing how this is you. This is your children,
6:53
Speaker 2: Your children are those children in you rock, You are
6:57
Speaker 2: Alex pretty, you are Renee Good, you are every one
6:59
Speaker 2: of these victims of US imperialism because it affects every
7:02
Speaker 2: single person on the planet.
7:05
Speaker 1: And you know, I think back to the days of
7:09
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen. And when I heard those words in your documentary,
7:14
Speaker 1: numbers numb, that was the first thing that came to
7:17
Speaker 1: my head. Was sort of bearing witness to the monstrous
7:21
Speaker 1: spectacle of the bigger the numbers of people lost to
7:28
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen got, the more numb people got to the
7:31
Speaker 1: human lives that were being lost. And I think there
7:35
Speaker 1: really is a terrifying truth there. And again it speaks
7:40
Speaker 1: to the service that you and Mike Preisner have done
7:43
Speaker 1: in not just compiling what could be compiled in terms
7:47
Speaker 1: of the research numbers and like you know, from the
7:52
Speaker 1: emissions of all the military vehicles to the you know
7:56
Speaker 1: environmental impact of all the you know explosions and wasted
8:01
Speaker 1: munitions that are you know, blown up or dumped into
8:04
Speaker 1: the ocean. I mean, like the list is just so
8:07
Speaker 1: incredibly long, and it's impossible, like you said, to try
8:11
Speaker 1: to quantify it. But I think what was even more
8:14
Speaker 1: horrifying to learn was that from you know, Bill Clinton
8:17
Speaker 1: to to now, you know, all these kind of global
8:21
Speaker 1: US led climate agreements don't factor in the US military
8:28
Speaker 1: when they're talking about you know, like our national emissions output.
8:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And people do not realize that I've had
8:36
Speaker 2: I've talked to several climate scientists, environmental academics, and they
8:40
Speaker 2: were absolutely flabbergasted at that fact that is should be
8:44
Speaker 2: widely known that militarism, not just US militarism, but every
8:48
Speaker 2: country's militarism is excluded under the Paris Accords. They gave
8:52
Speaker 2: an option to opt in, but of course many countries
8:55
Speaker 2: are like, why would I do that?
8:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what.
9:00
Speaker 2: So it's just completely insane and totally a farce that
9:04
Speaker 2: for the last thirty years of these international climate treaties,
9:08
Speaker 2: the US military has led the exemption of all military emissions.
9:13
Speaker 2: And it's gargantuan. It is completely gargantuan and totally hidden
9:16
Speaker 2: from this growing total. And so what's astonishing to me
9:20
Speaker 2: is that why am I the first person to confront
9:24
Speaker 2: these major politicians at these conferences decades in the making.
9:27
Speaker 2: You see this bipartisan consensus for empire and just the
9:32
Speaker 2: acceptance of lying about this, of accepting it as normal,
9:36
Speaker 2: And it's totally outrageous. And the whole dystopian nature of
9:40
Speaker 2: these climate conferences in general, which Real News has covered extensively,
9:44
Speaker 2: is just off the charts. I mean, it's all about
9:47
Speaker 2: corporate profit. It's all about how can we market this,
9:50
Speaker 2: how can we make money off of it? And then
9:51
Speaker 2: it's like, well, no, wonder, you have a contingent of
9:54
Speaker 2: society that's detaching itself less and less from that consensus
9:58
Speaker 2: reality that climate change is this exit central threat that
10:00
Speaker 2: we need to globally cooperate on because simply the opposition
10:04
Speaker 2: to the fascist takeover, they're not treating it like the
10:08
Speaker 2: emergency it is and they're not acting accordingly. So it
10:11
Speaker 2: just makes it look like a money making, you know, venture,
10:16
Speaker 2: and it's really unfortunate.
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Speaker 1: Another word might be a rackety goddamn racket. Ye I
10:22
Speaker 1: wanted to ask if you could sort of lay out
10:26
Speaker 1: kind of like this this double helix death spiral of
10:32
Speaker 1: US wars and military imperialism around the world and like
10:40
Speaker 1: the climate crisis, like how those two things and how
10:43
Speaker 1: you unpack it in this documentary, but like how those
10:45
Speaker 1: two things are intertwined in the most monstrous way.
10:51
Speaker 3: And this goes before obviously World War Two, with the.
10:56
Speaker 2: You know, with with the advent of the war making industry.
11:00
Speaker 2: How because Europe was left in ruins, you had the
11:03
Speaker 2: US kind of concentrating in the actual war machinery, and
11:06
Speaker 2: that's where you see the genesis of the war economy
11:09
Speaker 2: being a kind of a permanent footing in the US.
11:12
Speaker 3: It established well before that.
11:13
Speaker 2: I mean, we're talking about the first extra territorial military
11:16
Speaker 2: basis that were established through obviously the veins of the
11:20
Speaker 2: genocietal takeover in the first settler colonies here. But those
11:25
Speaker 2: first extra territorial military bases were to protect extractive industries
11:29
Speaker 2: of fur and mining just to basically, I mean, we
11:31
Speaker 2: almost drove beavers into extinction just so people could have
11:34
Speaker 2: funny hats in Europe.
11:36
Speaker 3: And then it became coal.
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Speaker 2: So the first bases that were overseas were to access
11:43
Speaker 2: coal and to basically be infrastructural holding cells for coal.
11:48
Speaker 2: And of course once the national security priority turned to oil,
11:50
Speaker 2: once oil was discovered and replaced coal, that's when we
11:55
Speaker 2: saw that just completely combine, where oil became the dominant
11:59
Speaker 2: priority for access and expansion, and then, like you said,
12:03
Speaker 2: it became the self fulfilling prophecy where in order to
12:06
Speaker 2: expand the military you needed more oil and more resources,
12:11
Speaker 2: and then you need to justify the expanse of the
12:15
Speaker 2: military to get more resources. So now this massive empire
12:19
Speaker 2: around the world with eight hundred bases spread across nearly
12:23
Speaker 2: every continent. It maintains itself through the access to oil,
12:28
Speaker 2: the pillaging of every last vessige of natural resources on
12:30
Speaker 2: the planet. And that's exactly laid bare with Trump's rhetoric today.
12:35
Speaker 2: He is literally saying, we need greenland that is the
12:39
Speaker 2: last basically unbridled wilderness on the planet. I mean the
12:45
Speaker 2: amount of coal, oil, and rare earth minerals that are
12:48
Speaker 2: under that ice. They are saying explicitly they need that
12:53
Speaker 2: for their national security interests. And so you just have
12:55
Speaker 2: to read between the lines here. I mean, you don't
12:57
Speaker 2: even really have to. He's saying, we need the oil
12:59
Speaker 2: from Venezuela. We need the oil from me Ron. That's
13:01
Speaker 2: what this is about. You had the Bush administration spending
13:05
Speaker 2: about a year trying to, you know, propagandize us into
13:09
Speaker 2: complacency with invading a country that had nothing to do
13:12
Speaker 2: with nine to eleven just to seize the oil. But
13:15
Speaker 2: they wasted a lot of time to propagandize us ties
13:18
Speaker 2: with WMDs, and so now this this mask is so
13:22
Speaker 2: ripped off where they don't even need to pretend. They're
13:26
Speaker 2: just saying explicitly we are trying to grab every last
13:30
Speaker 2: drop of oil because that's ours. So in a way,
13:33
Speaker 2: it's very It's an important moment, Max, because for the
13:37
Speaker 2: first time in my life, things are just very laid bare,
13:39
Speaker 2: and I feel like people are really putting all of
13:42
Speaker 2: this together in their mind and organizing with that international scope,
13:45
Speaker 2: with the US Empire being the machinery that's oppressing all
13:49
Speaker 2: of us around the planet.
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Speaker 1: I think you're right, and it really makes me sort
13:55
Speaker 1: of reflects on kind of the conditions that have made
14:01
Speaker 1: that more possible now than it was in the post
14:05
Speaker 1: nine to eleven years And I want to kind of
14:09
Speaker 1: break the fourth wall here, and part of this question
14:11
Speaker 1: is gonna be me asking if you could talk a
14:14
Speaker 1: bit about how this documentary Earth's Greatest Enemy embodies like
14:20
Speaker 1: your own trajectory as you know, a political activist, as
14:25
Speaker 1: a journalist, you know, like from the war Iraq War
14:30
Speaker 1: to now, because I'll be honest, you know, we would
14:34
Speaker 1: not be sitting next to each other, you know, twenty
14:37
Speaker 1: twenty three years ago. I grew up very conservative. My
14:42
Speaker 1: family and I were totally bought in on the Iraq
14:45
Speaker 1: War propaganda. We were, you know, part of the US
14:49
Speaker 1: majority that just felt so hurt, shocked and aimlessly hurt
14:54
Speaker 1: and shocked after nine to eleven, and trusted far too
14:59
Speaker 1: much in our own government to sort of tell us
15:02
Speaker 1: what to do next. It took a lot of years
15:05
Speaker 1: for me to sort of uncouple myself from that, you know, conditioning.
15:11
Speaker 1: But in the time, at the time, like I did
15:13
Speaker 1: not understand the kind of what to me was a
15:16
Speaker 1: left wing talking point of like why would we be
15:18
Speaker 1: going to war with another country just for oil? What
15:20
Speaker 1: does that mean? And now here I am, like nearly
15:24
Speaker 1: twenty five years later, being like Jesus, how could you not.
15:27
Speaker 4: See what was right in front of you?
15:28
Speaker 1: So like I guess, first of all, like how how
15:31
Speaker 1: were you able to see what I was not? And
15:34
Speaker 1: I guess connect us from there to hear like how
15:38
Speaker 1: the seeing of the monstrosity that was always there, you know,
15:43
Speaker 1: Like how more of us have actually come into the
15:46
Speaker 1: light and seen what we're actually up against.
15:51
Speaker 2: I think it all goes back to just my love
15:53
Speaker 2: for the environment, my love for nature, my love for humanity.
15:59
Speaker 2: I just really love people and I love connecting on
16:02
Speaker 2: an interpersonal level. And like I think when you look
16:05
Speaker 2: at this kind of death spiral, as you called it
16:07
Speaker 2: this machinery of capitalism and the subjugation of the rest
16:11
Speaker 2: of the planet at the barrel of a nuclear arm gun.
16:13
Speaker 2: To say subject or die to global capitalism. It is
16:18
Speaker 2: just so counterintuitive to like love solidarity, having a habitable
16:24
Speaker 2: planet and future. And I never was able to really
16:26
Speaker 2: articulate that capitalism was the problem. I was kind of
16:30
Speaker 2: a confused anarchist libertarian back when I was first being
16:35
Speaker 2: radicalized by politics because I thought Bush was evil incarnate.
16:38
Speaker 2: I was just like, who the hell are these people?
16:39
Speaker 2: They're demons, why are they doing this? And then Nancy Peloti,
16:42
Speaker 2: you know, and then you slowly kind of unpack your
16:44
Speaker 2: like hold on the Democrats are part of this. Hold
16:47
Speaker 2: on the media is part of this too, But it
16:50
Speaker 2: was always so obvious to me because of my.
16:52
Speaker 3: Just repulsion for war.
16:56
Speaker 2: When the media started talking about Iraq, I was so confused.
17:02
Speaker 3: Max.
17:02
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it helped because I was surrounded
17:04
Speaker 2: by militarism at San Diego State University. I was just
17:09
Speaker 2: thrown into this where I was surrounded by military frat bros.
17:14
Speaker 3: And I was just so I was just so taken aback.
17:18
Speaker 2: I mean, growing up in the Bay Area, so like
17:20
Speaker 2: the proximity to Berkeley, the hippies, the just that counterculture
17:23
Speaker 2: of like the revolutionary fervor of Berkeley, Mario Savo and
17:27
Speaker 2: the free speech steps and things like that, and so
17:29
Speaker 2: that was always baked in, even though I was just
17:32
Speaker 2: kind of like a generic dem kind of you know,
17:35
Speaker 2: from suburban like Pleasanton, California. So I think when the
17:40
Speaker 2: Iraq War started and the bombing of Baghdad, I was
17:42
Speaker 2: sitting in the cafeteria at San Diego State University and
17:45
Speaker 2: I felt nauseous, I felt sick, and people around me
17:48
Speaker 2: were cheering, and I'll never forget that moment.
17:52
Speaker 3: I just was like, what's going on? I'm so alone?
17:54
Speaker 3: Why people think this is good? This is sick?
17:57
Speaker 2: What did Sadam Dudas? I remember calling my mom. I said,
18:00
Speaker 2: what does Thedam do something? And she was like no.
18:02
Speaker 2: The media just started talking about this, and I just said,
18:05
Speaker 2: what is happening? And it was so hard to organize there.
18:08
Speaker 2: But it became so powerful to realize media was a
18:12
Speaker 2: tool to tell these stories because I started watching radical media.
18:15
Speaker 2: You know, we were talking at the time. This was
18:17
Speaker 2: around two thousand and three. It was like democracy now
18:19
Speaker 2: in Alex Jones. It was like a very weird The
18:22
Speaker 2: Internet was very strange, but you also had the capacity
18:25
Speaker 2: to do things. I mean, there was this egalitarian sense
18:27
Speaker 2: of the Internet that was very exciting where you could
18:30
Speaker 2: build real friendships and find things that were just really
18:34
Speaker 2: like not it wasn't fed to you by the algorithm,
18:37
Speaker 2: and so I was able to pursue so much knowledge
18:40
Speaker 2: and learn and be self taught and how to do
18:43
Speaker 2: these tools and so anyway, I'm going on this very
18:46
Speaker 2: long tangent to say it all synthesized for me, very obviously,
18:50
Speaker 2: but it is also.
18:51
Speaker 3: A journey I think for a lot of people.
18:53
Speaker 2: I've met people who are my age who said I
18:55
Speaker 2: didn't know anything before October seventh, which brings me to
18:58
Speaker 2: your second question. I think October seventh and the genocide
19:01
Speaker 2: in Gaza has been an extremely revealing moment, catalyzing moment
19:07
Speaker 2: for tens of millions of people around the world. And
19:09
Speaker 2: I'm anecdotally I can say that just traveling across the
19:12
Speaker 2: country with this documentary already going in rural urban areas,
19:16
Speaker 2: driving everywhere, talking to people, everyone has been motivated by
19:21
Speaker 2: the fact that this government has subsidized it overseen this
19:23
Speaker 2: genocide and how it has been bipartisan and the failure
19:27
Speaker 2: of the UH so called opposition and the Democratic Party
19:30
Speaker 2: to stop it and incubate what we now have. I
19:35
Speaker 2: think everyone's it's all just so crystal clear, and it's
19:38
Speaker 2: been actually really amazing to see the radicalization occur in
19:44
Speaker 2: circles that I never would have expected at all, older
19:48
Speaker 2: religious people.
19:49
Speaker 3: I mean, but really it's the youth. It's the youth
19:51
Speaker 3: who are seen.
19:51
Speaker 2: They don't have a future if they let this just
19:54
Speaker 2: grow unobated, if they let the data centers take over,
19:57
Speaker 2: they let the unregulated nature of global capitalism take over,
20:00
Speaker 2: unregulated nature of imperialism, which turns inward, which we're seeing
20:03
Speaker 2: the Ice executions in the street. So I'd say there's
20:05
Speaker 2: an explosion of consciousness around the world, synthesizing all these issues,
20:09
Speaker 2: putting Palestine as the cornerstone of our collective liberation, and
20:13
Speaker 2: realizing how all these things interconnect. And it's beautiful, Max
20:16
Speaker 2: Because on the streets during the Iraq War, Palestine was
20:19
Speaker 2: too controversial in the streets, right and occupy Wall Street,
20:23
Speaker 2: Obama is off limits, and so it's all it's all burgeoning. Now,
20:29
Speaker 2: it's all right beneath the surface and people are so
20:32
Speaker 2: ready to hear that phrase national strike, national strike. They
20:37
Speaker 2: know we've been in the streets with sustained protests. I'm
20:40
Speaker 2: an activist and a journalist again, I'm an advocacy journalist,
20:43
Speaker 2: so I advocate my own activism, and I embed myself
20:47
Speaker 2: in the people's stories and people's struggles and try to
20:49
Speaker 2: uplift those stories, just as real news does. And so
20:52
Speaker 2: I'm speaking from the streets. I was just in the
20:55
Speaker 2: streets in Minneapolis. I've never seen energy like I have now,
20:59
Speaker 2: and people standing up and solidary with their brothers and
21:01
Speaker 2: sisters because they want to terrorize us in a submission
21:03
Speaker 2: and silence and fear, and I'm seeing the opposite happen.
21:07
Speaker 2: And that's something extremely powerful and again kind of incalculable
21:11
Speaker 2: in terms of like what will happen with this energy.
21:14
Speaker 1: It's very exciting, it is, and you know, this is
21:18
Speaker 1: this is a moment in history not to be wasted
21:21
Speaker 1: because you know it won't be around forever. And you
21:27
Speaker 1: know it also sort of makes me kind of think about,
21:32
Speaker 1: you know, like again, what is so different between our
21:36
Speaker 1: moment now in the Year of our Lord twenty twenty
21:39
Speaker 1: six and you know, our moment then in the post
21:43
Speaker 1: nine to eleven years at the turn of the millennium,
21:47
Speaker 1: and I of course can't help but think about, you know,
21:49
Speaker 1: my own trajectory, my own family, Like, what has changed
21:53
Speaker 1: in our lives since then. Well, a massive economic, global
22:00
Speaker 1: financial meltdown happened. We lost everything that my parents had
22:05
Speaker 1: worked for, including the house that I grew up in,
22:09
Speaker 1: and you know, it's been a very long kind of
22:12
Speaker 1: struggle to get back to a place of peace and
22:15
Speaker 1: normalcy for our entire family since then. And now, as
22:19
Speaker 1: someone who goes around interviewing, you know, working people around
22:22
Speaker 1: the country talking about their lives and their stories, I
22:25
Speaker 1: hear a lot of echoes of that similar trajectory for
22:29
Speaker 1: a lot of people. And I guess that's just a
22:32
Speaker 1: long winded way of saying that at the turn of
22:35
Speaker 1: the century, when we were as a country much more
22:39
Speaker 1: gung ho about you know, Yeah, we have the right
22:43
Speaker 1: as the United States to go around the world telling
22:45
Speaker 1: other countries what to do. We have the right to
22:48
Speaker 1: spread democracy because it's the best system in the world.
22:51
Speaker 1: We're liberating people. We're we're not you know, doing something bad,
22:55
Speaker 1: YadA YadA YadA. You know, that was a time pre
23:00
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight crash, when like the American Dream
23:04
Speaker 1: was still.
23:05
Speaker 4: Plausible for a lot of us.
23:07
Speaker 1: You go out on the streets now you talk to people, Now,
23:09
Speaker 1: no one believes in the American dream. I mean, a
23:11
Speaker 1: handful of billionaires on everything, and all of our money
23:14
Speaker 1: is just being sucked out of the public coffers and
23:20
Speaker 1: into the war industry. And so what I hear now
23:24
Speaker 1: when I go to these demonstrations in Baltimore, DC. What
23:28
Speaker 1: I hear now when I talk to poor and working
23:31
Speaker 1: class people in deep red Trump country districts in the
23:35
Speaker 1: Midwest or the South, or here in the mid Atlantic,
23:38
Speaker 1: The common refrain that I hear is like, why is
23:42
Speaker 1: my money going there? When we're all kind of floundering here?
23:47
Speaker 1: And I think that that is also a very significant
23:51
Speaker 1: sign of where we are as a country, but also
23:53
Speaker 1: a significant kind of mobilizing factor that presents an oppert
24:00
Speaker 1: coortunity for people to look around and realize we're all
24:02
Speaker 1: getting screwed by, you know, very identifiable villains. And you know,
24:09
Speaker 1: I wanted to sort of like hook that back into
24:11
Speaker 1: Earth's greatest enemy and ask, like, who are the identifiable villains?
24:17
Speaker 1: You know, like in this story that you're telling and
24:19
Speaker 1: how do we take them on?
24:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the problem with.
24:27
Speaker 2: Capitalism and the status quo of neoliberalism is that everything's
24:32
Speaker 2: been co opted, superficialized, tokenized. Our struggles have been bought
24:36
Speaker 2: and sold back to us. And so for the last
24:41
Speaker 2: fifty years, labor density unions, that revolutionary undercurrent of all
24:48
Speaker 2: the progressive struggles, it's been kind of co opted in
24:51
Speaker 2: these corporate branding and marketing campaigns, and it's been really,
24:56
Speaker 2: really horrific to see because we're getting back to our
24:58
Speaker 2: footing where people were the sixties and seventies with this
25:01
Speaker 2: fundamental understanding of ideology and being able to articulate what
25:06
Speaker 2: we are fighting for and against.
25:08
Speaker 3: And so we're getting back to that.
25:09
Speaker 2: I think Bernie and you know, Democratic Socialists of America
25:13
Speaker 2: and things like that have really like resurrected the spirit
25:16
Speaker 2: of of what we can all kind of orient ourselves around.
25:20
Speaker 2: But for the longest time, Max, I mean, it was
25:23
Speaker 2: a you know, I grew up very anti communist. I mean,
25:25
Speaker 2: this was this was very very baked in to American
25:29
Speaker 2: society because of the.
25:31
Speaker 3: History against the ruling class.
25:33
Speaker 2: And so what you see now is parasitic billionaires who
25:37
Speaker 2: have basically seized that distrust that did exist for exactly
25:42
Speaker 2: the reasons that you're talking about. The disaffected masses who
25:45
Speaker 2: lost everything during the financial crisis, who knew that we
25:49
Speaker 2: were lied to about nine to eleven and in the
25:50
Speaker 2: Iraq War, they they don't trust these people. But Trump
25:55
Speaker 2: was very smart in the way that they seized that
25:58
Speaker 2: momentum and siphon all of the energy into this faux populism.
26:03
Speaker 2: And again there was no opposition infrastructure to counteract that,
26:07
Speaker 2: and so a lot of us are kind of flailing saying,
26:10
Speaker 2: how do we gain ground when they have taken over everything?
26:14
Speaker 2: And then the Democrats kind of incubated it and laid
26:16
Speaker 2: the groundwork for them to take over everything because they're
26:20
Speaker 2: basically Republican lights, because everything is about making profit at
26:23
Speaker 2: the end of the day. And so I think what
26:26
Speaker 2: we need to do is realize we are all victims
26:30
Speaker 2: of propaganda. We're all at different steps of our journey
26:35
Speaker 2: of breaking out of that, but that's all baked into
26:37
Speaker 2: all of us and so approaching each other. And I'm
26:40
Speaker 2: not talking about fascists or people who are apologists for genocide.
26:44
Speaker 2: There are certain contingent of society that can't be helped.
26:47
Speaker 2: They've been They've succumbed to the darkness. They've been beaten
26:51
Speaker 2: down by the system, and they've commodified everything. They have
26:54
Speaker 2: lost their empathy. I'm not saying that they're born like that.
26:56
Speaker 2: I'm just saying that a lot of them can't be
26:57
Speaker 2: helped right now, and we need to let that go.
26:59
Speaker 2: But I think the vast majority of people are empathetic.
27:03
Speaker 2: They're humanitarians. They want civil liberties, they want the foundation
27:07
Speaker 2: of what they believed America to be, human rights, the
27:11
Speaker 2: First Amendment, free speech, the beautiful things that make this
27:15
Speaker 2: country supposedly great. Those are the people that we need
27:19
Speaker 2: to reach out to with humility and empathy and reaching
27:22
Speaker 2: them where they're at. And I'm talking about service members,
27:26
Speaker 2: I'm talking about veterans. They are not the enemy. They
27:30
Speaker 2: are victims of the enemy. The enemy is the top brass,
27:34
Speaker 2: the military, the government officials who are complicit in this,
27:37
Speaker 2: who are profiting off of war, who are invested in
27:40
Speaker 2: the war machinery, the editors in chief at the New
27:43
Speaker 2: York Times, the Washington Post, who are putting out the
27:45
Speaker 2: propaganda that sows the seeds for genocide, who perpetuate the
27:49
Speaker 2: status quo of this death cycle, the Earth's great ast enemy.
27:54
Speaker 2: That was the Biden administration, that was before Trump. That's
27:57
Speaker 2: the status quo. That's what we've accepted as normal. Barreling
28:00
Speaker 2: us off a cliff, killing every last living thing on
28:04
Speaker 2: the planet, a finite planet.
28:07
Speaker 3: It's collective lunacy and.
28:09
Speaker 2: Madness to go into this year after year knowing the outcome.
28:13
Speaker 2: Max and I think people are so ready. They're starving
28:16
Speaker 2: for this information. They're sick of being gas lit and
28:19
Speaker 2: lied to, and they're realizing, Hey, this is not the
28:22
Speaker 2: reality that I see. This is not the reality that
28:24
Speaker 2: my neighbor sees. COVID was very important for the ruling class.
28:29
Speaker 2: We were fighting each other about vaccines, about god knows
28:33
Speaker 2: what while they cannibalized every last industry. They siphoned every
28:38
Speaker 2: last drop of wealth. They pillaged everything they gained, what
28:42
Speaker 2: tripled their wealth in the last five years. And what
28:45
Speaker 2: happened to us? Atomized, isolated, siloed off, brain rotted on
28:51
Speaker 2: our phones, thinking we can't ever do anything about this.
28:54
Speaker 3: We lost. That's what they want.
28:57
Speaker 2: Just like Barry Sanders in the movie says, see what
28:59
Speaker 2: you see, don't be duped.
29:01
Speaker 3: See what's right in front of your face.
29:03
Speaker 2: And I'm not talking about on your phone, on your screen,
29:05
Speaker 2: I'm talking about in reality. Fast majority of people are ready.
29:09
Speaker 2: They're waiting for you to talk about these things because
29:14
Speaker 2: they don't have the chance, They don't have that opportunity
29:16
Speaker 2: or those avenues because Elon Musk wants them to believe
29:19
Speaker 2: something else. And we have to ask, why is the
29:21
Speaker 2: richest man in the world showing us what he's showing us.
29:24
Speaker 3: So when we get on our devices.
29:25
Speaker 2: Yes, the advent of social media, the advent of Palestinian
29:28
Speaker 2: voices dictating their reality and taking back their agencies, and
29:31
Speaker 2: monumental revolutionary assisted to all of this, but we have
29:34
Speaker 2: to also be calculating strategic creative getting off of these
29:40
Speaker 2: devices and meeting like we used to do, because that's
29:44
Speaker 2: how we win.
29:45
Speaker 3: We don't win on here. That's just one tool for us.
29:48
Speaker 1: I think that's beautifully and powerfully put and vitally true.
29:53
Speaker 1: You know, like we are not, and we're saying this
29:57
Speaker 1: is as two media makers. You know, media personalities like
30:02
Speaker 1: their media can only do so much and we are
30:05
Speaker 1: trying to do as much as we can with it.
30:07
Speaker 1: And your new documentary is an incredible example of that.
30:12
Speaker 1: But I could not agree more with your last point that, like,
30:17
Speaker 1: you know, we're not going to you know, like bring
30:20
Speaker 1: a coalition of you know, poor working class regular people
30:25
Speaker 1: like banding together to stop the destruction of our society
30:30
Speaker 1: and our planet online, Like that's not gonna happen. Like
30:36
Speaker 1: you don't get fifty thousand people marching through the streets
30:39
Speaker 1: of Minneapolis just by you know, posting and sending emails,
30:43
Speaker 1: Like you have to have that in person connection, which
30:46
Speaker 1: is all I'm hearing coming from Minneapolis. People are saying,
30:49
Speaker 1: like I'm both simultaneously more afraid of my government than
30:53
Speaker 1: I've ever been, but I'm never felt safer in my
30:55
Speaker 1: own neighborhood because everyone's talking to each other and everyone's
30:59
Speaker 1: like kind of working together.
31:01
Speaker 4: And like.
31:03
Speaker 1: We were already losing that basic infrastructure for society as
31:09
Speaker 1: such well before twenty twenty. But I think COVID really
31:13
Speaker 1: did a number on what was left of our social infrastructure,
31:17
Speaker 1: on our you know, social being, Like so much of us,
31:21
Speaker 1: so many of us, you know, just stayed closed in,
31:25
Speaker 1: stayed cut off, stayed glued to our phones and our computers,
31:30
Speaker 1: and as you mentioned, the powers that be, the people
31:33
Speaker 1: who control the media those platforms. You know, they know that,
31:37
Speaker 1: and they are manipulating that to the point that you know,
31:41
Speaker 1: no one has an agreed upon basis of like the
31:45
Speaker 1: reality that we're actually all living in. Because depending on
31:48
Speaker 1: what feed you're looking at, you know where you live,
31:51
Speaker 1: you know what your search history is, you're going to
31:54
Speaker 1: see an entirely different world be outside your window than
31:58
Speaker 1: the person who's living next door to you. And that's
32:00
Speaker 1: a very dangerous and dark place to be. But I
32:04
Speaker 1: wanted to like kind of hook that back into something
32:06
Speaker 1: else that you said, which was like the value of
32:11
Speaker 1: not only talking to service members and military veterans, but
32:17
Speaker 1: like that was made manifest in this documentary, right, I mean,
32:21
Speaker 1: like it's important in and of itself, because, as you said,
32:23
Speaker 1: they are not the enemy. They are the victims of
32:25
Speaker 1: this monstrous machine. They are the human grist for the
32:29
Speaker 1: proverbial mill of US imperialism. But it also kind of
32:33
Speaker 1: hooks into the beginning of this conversation where we were
32:37
Speaker 1: talking about how hard it is to actually research and
32:41
Speaker 1: understand this topic of like just how big of an
32:45
Speaker 1: environmental threat is the US military to the world, And
32:49
Speaker 1: it was so clear to me in your documentary that
32:53
Speaker 1: if you go and try to get answers to those
32:56
Speaker 1: questions from top government officials or military brass, you're not
33:00
Speaker 1: going to get anywhere. But when you and Mike Preisner
33:03
Speaker 1: are talking to veterans the rank and file, you know,
33:08
Speaker 1: like of the military, you you get a very different
33:11
Speaker 1: perspective on the problem. And I want to ask if
33:14
Speaker 1: you could talk a little bit about how different that
33:16
Speaker 1: perspective actually is.
33:18
Speaker 2: Okay, So there's this hive mind that kind of operates
33:22
Speaker 2: in a similar fashion to like how.
33:23
Speaker 3: A corporate board would.
33:25
Speaker 2: Right, Like, so let's say someone just has a conscience
33:27
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, who's like on the executive board
33:30
Speaker 2: of like Amazon or something, they would just be kicked out,
33:33
Speaker 2: like you need to make money. You need to make
33:34
Speaker 2: more money the next than the last quarter. Otherwise you're
33:37
Speaker 2: not profitable, you're a failing entity. It's exactly how the
33:41
Speaker 2: US military operates. So when you're looking at who's sitting
33:45
Speaker 2: on the board of you know, these these board of
33:47
Speaker 2: directors of the defense contractors, they're all interlocking with like
33:50
Speaker 2: the media arms and all of these things. And that
33:52
Speaker 2: kind of explains this like hive mind operational structure of
33:57
Speaker 2: a system that kind of works on its own. It
34:01
Speaker 2: doesn't have a conscience, but of course it's comprised of
34:04
Speaker 2: people who do, and they can speak out and they
34:09
Speaker 2: have voices, and they have their own minds, even though
34:13
Speaker 2: kind of you're beaten down in the military to not
34:15
Speaker 2: have your own mind. So when you break out of that,
34:18
Speaker 2: when you see it for what it is, it's such
34:21
Speaker 2: a powerful thing. I know hundreds of service members because
34:25
Speaker 2: of my husband's work, obviously organizing soldiers and getting people out,
34:30
Speaker 2: because anyone can get out of the military. It doesn't
34:32
Speaker 2: need to be something specific. Anyone can file a co
34:35
Speaker 2: packet and get out today. You never need to stay
34:38
Speaker 2: in and might can orient you through that. But it's
34:40
Speaker 2: just so amazing to see people who are coming to
34:42
Speaker 2: the movie watching it who are active duty.
34:45
Speaker 3: My cousin, who was.
34:45
Speaker 2: A twenty year old naval officer watched it and he
34:49
Speaker 2: was just like, you know, cause I don't agree with
34:50
Speaker 2: your politics, but like I'm here to support you.
34:52
Speaker 3: After the movie, he was just like shaking. He's like,
34:53
Speaker 3: I'm ready to f and go, dude, Like I'm ready
34:56
Speaker 3: to fight.
34:57
Speaker 2: And it's just reaching people on a human level, because
35:01
Speaker 2: I think, especially when you reach out to service members.
35:04
Speaker 2: They're victims. They're not profiting off of this. They don't
35:07
Speaker 2: benefit from this system. They're cannon fodder. They're the human
35:13
Speaker 2: detritus that are going to be kicked out in the street.
35:15
Speaker 2: Like Levaugh, the homeless veteran at the beginning of the movie,
35:18
Speaker 2: he represents kind of the consequences of the system. I mean,
35:23
Speaker 2: he represents all of the destruction of the environment. That
35:26
Speaker 2: the garbage that's tossed in the ocean, every bullet fragment
35:31
Speaker 2: that's exploded in the chemical exposure of all, you know,
35:34
Speaker 2: the toxins left everywhere that were bombing and shooting shells,
35:38
Speaker 2: And that story alone is so powerful. Just one single
35:42
Speaker 2: homeless vet who was in a commercial for the Army.
35:49
Speaker 5: First day he ever gave, I was an arn't US
35:52
Speaker 5: Army four to put out in till six and it
35:56
Speaker 5: was hell.
35:57
Speaker 4: That was a Camptaji seven miles south of the back.
35:59
Speaker 4: Then I was on the one that army winding merciers.
36:11
Speaker 4: I was the guy with the helicopters. Everybody, listen up,
36:15
Speaker 4: this is Levon. Hey Levon, I'm winy. You're on the
36:17
Speaker 4: one twenty today.
36:18
Speaker 5: So if there's anything you need, just ask these guys.
36:21
Speaker 4: They'll take care of it all right. Welcome aboard. Thank you.
36:24
Speaker 4: Have you ever been around anything this fast before, watching
36:28
Speaker 4: he's worked, or anything in this fast before?
36:36
Speaker 5: Yeah, well let's just oot see how army training gets
36:40
Speaker 5: you straight from now strength for later.
36:41
Speaker 4: Go ahead, dot com. That was all a lie.
36:54
Speaker 5: I have nerve down and so I'm actually losing my
36:56
Speaker 5: hands because I won't tell you this as much as
36:58
Speaker 5: I can, and so they're a gun. It hurts, he hurts,
37:02
Speaker 5: But as was that high drive fluid and service does.
37:07
Speaker 4: Lives go away? I can get through it. Oh as
37:09
Speaker 4: I'm crying.
37:16
Speaker 3: It encapsulates everything.
37:17
Speaker 2: It's like you're exploited, your story, your body, and then
37:23
Speaker 2: you're thrown in the trash and you're left to die
37:27
Speaker 2: with no help. And that's the thing that veterans need
37:30
Speaker 2: to understand. Whether it's burn pits or agent orange chemical exposure,
37:35
Speaker 2: there's no help on the other end. Under this system,
37:38
Speaker 2: it's just about churning your body out for profit. You're
37:42
Speaker 2: just another commodity. And once you realize that, you join
37:46
Speaker 2: the fight because you can always get out and you
37:48
Speaker 2: can make your own decisions and agency to realize it's
37:51
Speaker 2: not worth it. It's not worth your life. Your life
37:55
Speaker 2: has value, and your life has dignity, and you need
37:59
Speaker 2: to put it toward benefiting humanity and the planet.
38:04
Speaker 1: Again, that is very beautifully and powerfully put and it
38:09
Speaker 1: really kind of chills my blood hearing everything that you're saying,
38:15
Speaker 1: because it sounds so eerily familiar from the reporting that
38:21
Speaker 1: I've been doing over the past few years, starting in
38:26
Speaker 1: the small town of East Palestine, Ohio. And we are
38:30
Speaker 1: having this conversation at the end of January twenty twenty six.
38:34
Speaker 1: I'm going to be back in East Palestine next week.
38:36
Speaker 1: It'll be the three year anniversary since the Norfolk Southern
38:39
Speaker 1: bomb train derailed in these people's backyards, turned their lives
38:45
Speaker 1: upside down. Train filled with toxic chemicals that you know,
38:51
Speaker 1: in an industry that has been just cut to the
38:54
Speaker 1: bone on the labor side, on the safety side, but
38:58
Speaker 1: is making you know, like more profits than it ever has,
39:01
Speaker 1: right and who benefits from that the shareholders and the executives,
39:05
Speaker 1: who bears the cost of that, the workers on the rails,
39:08
Speaker 1: and the people in towns like East Palestine, Ohio. And
39:12
Speaker 1: this is you know, an entire region that has been
39:15
Speaker 1: poisoned by you know, like industrial or corporate, you know,
39:22
Speaker 1: profit seeking, greed and government complicity and negligence. The oro
39:27
Speaker 1: own EPA was telling people there, you're fine, it's okay
39:31
Speaker 1: to go back home. The airs safe, the water's safe.
39:34
Speaker 1: And here they are three years later telling me, like,
39:36
Speaker 1: you know, people are getting all kinds of weird cancers.
39:38
Speaker 1: People have to leave because they can't stay in their
39:41
Speaker 1: homes without getting nosebleeds, rashes, their kids bleeding like out
39:45
Speaker 1: of every orifice. Like it is a shit show, a
39:48
Speaker 1: monstrous shit show that is sadly not unique to Ohio.
39:53
Speaker 1: What I have learned going to different sacrifice zones so called,
39:58
Speaker 1: around the country, talking to different poor and working class
40:01
Speaker 1: people here in South Baltimore, you know, down in Georgia
40:05
Speaker 1: near the biolab fire that happened last year, Moss Landing,
40:10
Speaker 1: you know, like in California. Like this, this is everywhere,
40:13
Speaker 1: and people are being poisoned and abandoned in the exact
40:19
Speaker 1: same way that you just described as like military veterans
40:24
Speaker 1: and the people living abroad, like who are you know,
40:28
Speaker 1: if not killed by our munitions, are poisoned by them,
40:31
Speaker 1: you know, for years and the rest of their lives. Right,
40:34
Speaker 1: So all of that is here at home as much
40:38
Speaker 1: as it is there abroad, And frankly, I don't think
40:41
Speaker 1: your average American knows that when it comes to like
40:45
Speaker 1: sites of industrial and you know, mass pollution. Here in
40:50
Speaker 1: the United States, the biggest like portion of super fun
40:55
Speaker 1: sites that come from one source are is the Department
40:59
Speaker 1: of Defense. It's like military bases, it's you know, weapons
41:03
Speaker 1: manufacturing plants, Like it's the kind of foam that they
41:08
Speaker 1: use to put out fires that puts forever chemicals in
41:11
Speaker 1: the water that we're all drinking. And so I wanted
41:14
Speaker 1: to kind of bring it back home for a second
41:17
Speaker 1: and ask, like if you could talk about like the
41:21
Speaker 1: vast environmental kind of impact that the war machine is
41:27
Speaker 1: having on Americans, and like, yeah, how that connects to
41:35
Speaker 1: the you know, imperial monster of American militarism abroad.
41:43
Speaker 2: You know, you look at just legacy contamination of what
41:46
Speaker 2: the US did during the Cold War, during World War Two.
41:49
Speaker 2: I mean you even still see dead zones from World
41:52
Speaker 2: War One from small munitions, which just kind of shows
41:56
Speaker 2: you how detrimental these are in just training, even just
42:00
Speaker 2: training alone, Like you mentioned forever chemicals, I mean the
42:03
Speaker 2: firefighting foam that's used extensively by the military. The military
42:07
Speaker 2: is one of the most pervasive users of pifa's contamination.
42:10
Speaker 2: There are safe alternatives, there have been forever, but they
42:13
Speaker 2: just don't use them because it's I guessed less cost
42:16
Speaker 2: effective and they'd rather just dump them all and contaminate
42:20
Speaker 2: water supplies. So people may know peripherally about Camp La June,
42:24
Speaker 2: which is the worst water contamination event in US history.
42:27
Speaker 2: This is now a super fun site, Camp Lejune, North
42:30
Speaker 2: Carolina Military Base, where they dumped toxic compounds for decades,
42:35
Speaker 2: and after they knew that it was toxic, they continue
42:39
Speaker 2: to do it and cover it up. And so a
42:41
Speaker 2: million people were poisoned harmed by this toxic dumping, and
42:45
Speaker 2: there was a huge amount of poison infants that were
42:50
Speaker 2: still born babies. And what was most shocking about this
42:54
Speaker 2: max is this could be looked at as like, oh,
42:57
Speaker 2: it's just a sixty year old story. The government took
43:00
Speaker 2: care of everyone and they'll never do it again. Maybe
43:03
Speaker 2: they just didn't know any better. Well, it's amazing to
43:06
Speaker 2: think that now sixty years later, people are still dying.
43:09
Speaker 2: They have they have ailments, they're generational, physical and physically
43:16
Speaker 2: impaired from the toxic water contamination, and there's no database,
43:19
Speaker 2: there's no They are trying to try every single individual claim,
43:24
Speaker 2: and the judge said it would take like over a
43:26
Speaker 2: century to try to like actually give all of these
43:29
Speaker 2: people what they deserve. And of course a lot of
43:31
Speaker 2: them have died. They're just waiting for all them to
43:33
Speaker 2: die off so they just don't have to deal with
43:34
Speaker 2: them anymore. But I think it really just explains how
43:36
Speaker 2: they deal with victims of burn pits, with victims of
43:40
Speaker 2: Asian orange poisoning. They deny, they deny, they deny, They
43:44
Speaker 2: try to just resist doling out even a penny for
43:47
Speaker 2: the victims, and then the site is left destroyed.
43:51
Speaker 3: I mean, can't it's a super fun site.
43:54
Speaker 2: This is what this is, just a poison toxic site
43:57
Speaker 2: that doesn't go through proper remediation. There are hundreds of
44:00
Speaker 2: them all across the US. Like you said, the vast
44:03
Speaker 2: majority are either US military installations or have previously previously
44:08
Speaker 2: housed military uses. So bullet manufacturing, you have the Hanford
44:13
Speaker 2: nuclear site, which is like a ticking time bomb that
44:15
Speaker 2: can poison three states at once in the entire river
44:20
Speaker 2: that supplies water to like half the country. So this
44:22
Speaker 2: is these are serious problems that are not being dealt
44:25
Speaker 2: with because we don't have a functional government that is
44:28
Speaker 2: going around saying, hey, how do we do this clean
44:30
Speaker 2: up properly?
44:31
Speaker 3: No, no, no, we're just gonna commit fraud. We're just gonna lie.
44:35
Speaker 2: Governors don't want the black spot on their record by
44:37
Speaker 2: saying we have a super fun site, we need to
44:39
Speaker 2: clean it up, we need to divert resources. They'd rather
44:41
Speaker 2: ignore it. And of course the military is sacred, it's worshiped,
44:45
Speaker 2: so they don't even want to combat it. In one
44:48
Speaker 2: amazing instance, Jay Insley, who was the governor, previous governor
44:51
Speaker 2: of Washington, who ran on climate change as his entire doctrine,
44:56
Speaker 2: he wouldn't even he wouldn't even criticize the military. He
44:59
Speaker 2: wouldn't even answer a basic question on should these be
45:01
Speaker 2: included or not in emissions reporting. I mean, the cowardice
45:05
Speaker 2: is frankly horrifying and disgusting, So you know it is.
45:09
Speaker 2: It's so far reaching here when you put legacy contamination aside,
45:14
Speaker 2: just again, the maintenance of the arsenal here at home,
45:16
Speaker 2: we have hundreds of bases here in the US. Every
45:19
Speaker 2: base is contamp dumping forever chemicals in the ground. Every
45:23
Speaker 2: base has contamination, some of them much higher than Camp
45:27
Speaker 2: Lea June. We talk to a person who is testing
45:30
Speaker 2: the groundwater around bases in the US. He is saying
45:34
Speaker 2: he is finding ground contamination higher than Camp Lejun. Why
45:37
Speaker 2: don't we hear about this, Max, Why this is the
45:41
Speaker 2: most base level big tent ever for a human being
45:44
Speaker 2: clean water, clean air, clean food. If we can't build
45:48
Speaker 2: an opposition or an organizational infrastructure around.
45:51
Speaker 3: That, what are we doing? What are we doing?
45:54
Speaker 2: So again, it's this total ignorance, total ignorance of the
45:59
Speaker 2: million terry bean. Actually not a benevolent force spreading democracy
46:03
Speaker 2: and human rights, a force for profit that is destructive, deadly,
46:09
Speaker 2: totally dissociated from human life, the sanctity of life.
46:14
Speaker 3: It's willing to.
46:15
Speaker 2: Kill everything and everyone on the planet. So Jeff Bezos
46:19
Speaker 2: can have another yacht.
46:21
Speaker 3: Is it worth it? Hell no, it's not. Hell no,
46:24
Speaker 3: it's not.
46:25
Speaker 2: And so this just brings it all home, and especially
46:29
Speaker 2: with Ice because at the end of the movie we
46:31
Speaker 2: talk about the militarization of the police. So that concept
46:35
Speaker 2: of the imperial boomerang. I mean, of course, it's always
46:37
Speaker 2: been our tactics of colonialism genocide. They've always been circling back, right,
46:42
Speaker 2: But I think the visceral nature of it now, where
46:46
Speaker 2: we see storm troopers massed immunized in the streets, state
46:52
Speaker 2: executioners in military garb, where you can't even distinguish is
46:56
Speaker 2: this Palestine?
46:57
Speaker 3: Is this here? What am I looking at?
47:00
Speaker 2: It's here, baby, It's here to roost, And so I
47:04
Speaker 2: don't even there's no difference anymore. I think for a
47:07
Speaker 2: long time people were trying to convince people, hey, no, no,
47:10
Speaker 2: you should care about Palestine. This is all going to
47:12
Speaker 2: come back up, and you shouldn't care about it because
47:13
Speaker 2: eventually it's going to come back home. You should care
47:15
Speaker 2: about because it's human life. It's human life, and it's
47:17
Speaker 2: on our shoulders. This is our government doing this. But
47:19
Speaker 2: I think especially now, people are saying, oh my god,
47:21
Speaker 2: it's here, it's here, and we're all of our liberations
47:27
Speaker 2: intrinsically tied to one another. And I think it's becoming
47:30
Speaker 2: so so clear, and especially when you tie in the
47:33
Speaker 2: environment max, because it's not just one life loss. This
47:37
Speaker 2: is the air, this is the water, this is our planet.
47:41
Speaker 2: And it doesn't stop with Palestine, it doesn't stop with
47:43
Speaker 2: the congo of the rainforest, it's the lungs of the planet.
47:47
Speaker 2: Every drop of water comes back, you know. And that's
47:51
Speaker 2: what's so crucial about the collaborative nature of approaching this
47:54
Speaker 2: existential crisis is that instead we have the great power
47:57
Speaker 2: competition where we're fighting, we're preparing a war with China
48:00
Speaker 2: when we should be cooperating. How can we approach these
48:03
Speaker 2: together to actually give us a fighting chance.
48:08
Speaker 1: I want to kind of end on that powerful note,
48:12
Speaker 1: right because as much fire as I'm feeling in my
48:16
Speaker 1: belly thinking about our collective duty to respond to this
48:23
Speaker 1: moment in history, for humanity, for life on this planet,
48:31
Speaker 1: for our children, our grandchildren, all of it, you know,
48:37
Speaker 1: I am feeling more called to this fight than ever before.
48:43
Speaker 1: At the same time that I, like everyone else who's
48:46
Speaker 1: watching this right now, am feeling more distraught about the
48:50
Speaker 1: state of things in the world right now. And you know,
48:55
Speaker 1: it seems like we just have a you know, on
49:00
Speaker 1: the gas pedal careening in the exact wrong direction, right,
49:06
Speaker 1: not only you know, in terms of tackling the climate crisis,
49:11
Speaker 1: but in that double helix fashion like stopping the US
49:15
Speaker 1: war machine. Jesus, It's only we're only in the first
49:19
Speaker 1: month of twenty twenty six, if we've invaded Venezuela, kidnapped
49:23
Speaker 1: its president, US is talking about just going in and
49:26
Speaker 1: taking Greenland, invading Iran. Like it, it feels like the
49:31
Speaker 1: very monster that you like photograph and document and detail
49:37
Speaker 1: in this documentary is on a murderous planet, destroying rampage.
49:44
Speaker 1: And like I think, I know a lot of people
49:47
Speaker 1: out there are feeling like, oh my god, like this
49:50
Speaker 1: can't be stopped. But I want to end on the
49:54
Speaker 1: note that it can and it must, and what tools
50:00
Speaker 1: your documentary gives us to help make that a reality.
50:06
Speaker 3: I think this is very important. Like we said, see
50:08
Speaker 3: what you see, don't be duped.
50:09
Speaker 2: So see what you see, meaning the success stories, the
50:13
Speaker 2: things that the billionaire class does not want us to see,
50:16
Speaker 2: the victories across the country, the mobilizations, the coalescening, these movements,
50:22
Speaker 2: the burgeoning of consciousness. I mean, I always say, empire Zionism,
50:25
Speaker 2: it's a paper tiger. And that's why the propaganda is
50:28
Speaker 2: so desperate, and that's why the violence is so extreme,
50:31
Speaker 2: because the colonizer mind cannot be a liberated one. They
50:34
Speaker 2: can kill, they can kill and destroy, but they can't win.
50:39
Speaker 2: They can't be victorious. And all an empire knows is
50:42
Speaker 2: that every problem is a nail. And so the more
50:45
Speaker 2: that they dig their own graves, the more people wake up.
50:48
Speaker 2: The question is are we going to wake up fast enough?
50:50
Speaker 2: And I think that when we see success stories like
50:52
Speaker 2: last year, Max thirty five data centers got stopped in
50:56
Speaker 2: the US, where is that on the news? So it's
50:59
Speaker 2: us seeking out the things that can actually reinvigorate our
51:04
Speaker 2: revolutionary spirit energy and not get despondent and paralyzed with
51:08
Speaker 2: the sheer, terrifying nature of it all because it is overwhelming,
51:12
Speaker 2: and again it's intentional to breat and barrage our minds
51:17
Speaker 2: like this, our horny they've psychologically it's a psychic assault,
51:22
Speaker 2: it's a physical assault. It's an all body, all mind assault,
51:25
Speaker 2: and they know exactly how to manipulate us. If they've
51:28
Speaker 2: learned anything from the last mass uprising, it's that And
51:31
Speaker 2: so I think having that consciousness, yes, they've want us.
51:36
Speaker 2: They've wanted to individualize everything, and that's the whole problem
51:40
Speaker 2: with liberalism, capitalism, individualizing our struggles and the solution paper
51:45
Speaker 2: straws driving look and I have solar panels. I'm a
51:49
Speaker 2: militant composter. You don't get a shred of food past me,
51:52
Speaker 2: ask my husband. But it doesn't mean that I don't
51:55
Speaker 2: understand who is the perpetrator, who who's actually at fault.
52:00
Speaker 2: It's not us, it's them. And so while you need
52:03
Speaker 2: to act in your individual choices with whatever capacity you have,
52:07
Speaker 2: with whatever talents you have, build and guide that to
52:11
Speaker 2: the struggle. Because if it didn't matter what you said online,
52:13
Speaker 2: they wouldn't be spending billions of dollars in propaganda to
52:16
Speaker 2: manipulate and curate our realities. If it didn't matter what
52:18
Speaker 2: you did out there, they wouldn't be spending billions of
52:21
Speaker 2: dollars on stormtroopers to terrorize us and to make us
52:24
Speaker 2: feel scared to walk out of our houses. Obey or die,
52:27
Speaker 2: Comply or die, Right, that's what they said about Alex
52:29
Speaker 2: Pretty you should have stayed inside.
52:31
Speaker 3: No, we have the right to assert our liberties. We
52:34
Speaker 3: have the right to do these things.
52:36
Speaker 2: So to kind of reclaim reality is like a revolutionary
52:39
Speaker 2: act in itself, because it is a war on our minds.
52:42
Speaker 2: That's the first step, joining an organization, getting out there,
52:46
Speaker 2: being a part of the community. Because Max, we don't
52:49
Speaker 2: do this, we don't do this work because we know
52:51
Speaker 2: we're going to win tomorrow.
52:52
Speaker 3: We do it because we have to.
52:54
Speaker 2: Like Chris Hedges said, we fight fascists because they're fascists.
52:58
Speaker 2: We have to fight it because we brought children in
53:01
Speaker 2: this world, and not just that, because I love this planet.
53:04
Speaker 2: I want my children to go scuba diving Innoko Bay.
53:07
Speaker 2: I want him to meet the du Gonge. I don't
53:09
Speaker 2: want him to think that I gave up because I
53:12
Speaker 2: just succumbed to the darkness.
53:14
Speaker 3: I don't want them to I want them to know
53:16
Speaker 3: that we fought till the end, and so we have to.
53:19
Speaker 2: We do it because we have to, because we love life,
53:22
Speaker 2: and we do it to preserve life. And we win
53:26
Speaker 2: when we know that we can because guess what, we
53:28
Speaker 2: have the power. We have billions of people on this
53:32
Speaker 2: planet and the rest of the world is ready to go.
53:35
Speaker 2: They're waiting for Americans. They're looking at us saying it's time.
53:39
Speaker 2: It's time for you guys to wake up, because we
53:41
Speaker 2: don't want our planet destroyed. Because if you're out of
53:44
Speaker 2: control government and military empire. So as crazy and dystopian
53:50
Speaker 2: as things may seem, and yes indeed they are, there
53:55
Speaker 2: is an alternative path that is becoming more and more
54:01
Speaker 2: urgent by the day, and I think people are realizing
54:04
Speaker 2: that more and more that the status quo is death,
54:08
Speaker 2: that you're in or out, and I think a lot
54:11
Speaker 2: more people are choosing life. They're choosing to be all
54:14
Speaker 2: in organizationally lending whatever they can to the struggle because
54:19
Speaker 2: we have to do max and I think once that
54:22
Speaker 2: consciousness flips, mass education, of course is a very important tool.
54:26
Speaker 2: That's why we do what we do. Once that flips,
54:30
Speaker 2: it's going to happen quick. Occupy It happened quick. That
54:33
Speaker 2: was amazing. That was one thing that I was like,
54:36
Speaker 2: this is going to end in a couple of days,
54:37
Speaker 2: and it lasted for months and months. That was beautiful, revolutionary,
54:41
Speaker 2: and we took that spirit and I think it still
54:43
Speaker 2: carries on with us today and we're waiting for that moment,
54:45
Speaker 2: and I think it's really right around the corner. It's coming,
54:48
Speaker 2: and once it's here, it's unstoppable.
54:51
Speaker 3: And we need.
54:51
Speaker 2: Millions of people civil disobedience, non violent civil disobedience because
54:55
Speaker 2: we cannot fight the military empire with violence. We can't
54:58
Speaker 2: fight it with military might we shut down capital. That's
55:02
Speaker 2: the language these s peep'll speak. We haven't even tried
55:04
Speaker 2: to strike, but baby, when we do it, that's going
55:08
Speaker 2: to send shock waves through the world. And we can
55:10
Speaker 2: move mountains when we stop business as usual.