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Around the World: Venezuela, Saudi Oil Imports to Zero, Ukraine, USA Today & Palantir, Epstein Story · IndieNewsNow LIVE! Clips

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Who are these people?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now we have the extended lightning round slash around the world because we are going
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: to touch a bunch of different countries and a bunch of different areas.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: So one thing is about Delcy and Maduro.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: I have a thread on that.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Saudi crude imports going to zero.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's concerning.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Ukrainian drones hitting Russia.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: All right, we're talking about First Amendment cases.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and I just realized I spelled amendment wrong.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: And Corporate News Hiring Palantir.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just five of them, and I've got even more.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get to it.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: First, Tim Anderson,
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: and I don't know Mr.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Anderson, who copied this from Eduardo Miguel Alvarez Estevez back in July.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: I said it in January.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: They called me biased.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Today, Delcy proves me right.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: On January 3rd,
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote that something that earned me criticism,
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: I said that there had been a betrayal in Venezuela.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: I said Maduro did not just fall just because of the brute force of the empire,
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: but because the bigwigs of the Bolivarian Revolution handed him over.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: They called me biased.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: They told me it was a serious accusation, that I had no proof that unity came first.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: I stayed silent for a while, not because I doubted, but because history needed to speak.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: And today,
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: after seeing Delcy's interview with Spanish journalist Javier Negre,
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: ABC correspondent, I no longer need more proof.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: History spoke for me.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: That interview confirms everything.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Delcy Rodriguez,
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: interim president of Venezuela,
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: sat down with an international outlet and bared her soul, or what's left of it.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: And what I saw wasn't a leader defending her country.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: I saw an administrator of defeat,
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: a manager of surrender, a woman who has turned betrayal into a subtle art.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: On Maduro and Celia, the loyalty that doesn't exist.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: Delcy says she defends Maduro's innocence,
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: but she governs by the mandate of the same country that kidnapped him.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: That contradiction isn't clumsiness, it's calculation.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: She wants to legitimize herself before the international community by accepting
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: the fait accompli of the intervention, but without taking responsibility for it.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: She maintains a discourse of loyalty toward Maduro to avoid losing
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: the internal support she still has while carrying out Washington's agenda.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: And on Celia Flores, absolute silence, not a word.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: The first combatant,
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: the wife of the legitimate president is imprisoned and Delcy doesn't dedicate even
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: a minute to her.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because Celia is a thorn in the side of the new relationship with the United States.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because mentioning her would be a reminder that there are political prisoners
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: who don't fit into the economic calculus because the new Venezuela has no room for
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: the inconvenient.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot more here.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, dissident.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think Delcy selling out Palestine means she has no principles,
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: so it would not surprise me if she made a deal with the U.S. to sell out Maduro.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah, thank you, Steve.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Tim Anderson, the guy who wrote this, is an Australian academic and activist.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: He was a senior lecturer at University of Sydney until early 2019.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: Again, Delcy spoke of trade agreements,
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: of security cooperation,
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: of the fight against organized crime,
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: all with the country that invaded Venezuela,
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: with the country that kidnapped the legitimate president,
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: with the country that has Celia Flores in a cell.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: There wasn't a single word of condemnation,
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: not a single mention of the violation of sovereignty.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: The military invasion in her mouth became a negotiated change of administration.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: The capture of a head of state by force transformed into a business opportunity.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's not diplomacy.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's collaborationism.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's whitewashing the military intervention in exchange for reactivating the economy.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's putting a price on dignity.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: And Delcy has already set hers.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: Again, this continues about silence on the fallen, the silence that screams.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: We'll finish with this.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: And Del Ciener first.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wait, hang on.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: 32 Cubans died in Venezuela defending the Bolivarian Revolution.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: They're not a statistic.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: They're names, families, mothers who still weep, children who grew up without fathers.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: They're doctors,
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: advisors,
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: soldiers who left their land to fulfill a solidarity mission and found death
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: on Venezuelan soil.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: And Delcy, in her first major international interview, didn't dedicate a single word to them.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: No tribute, no remembrance, no, we haven't forgotten them.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: That silence is eloquent.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: For the new government, the fallen are a burden.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: An inconvenient memory that must be forgotten to facilitate the approach to Washington.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: The memory of those who believed in the Bolivarian Revolution has been liquidated
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: in favor of the new regime's economic interests.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: And on Cuba, the same.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: An ambiguous mention, rhetorical without real commitment.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: A vague wish for good relations that won't lift a finger for the island.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Solidarity with Cuba has become an empty statement, a courteous phrase.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: While U.S. sanctions against us intensify and Delcy applauds the agreements with Washington.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: The betrayal is no longer a hypothesis.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that's before she announced today cooperation with Israel.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we had talked about her letting the IDF in to help rebuild after the earthquake,
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: which some...
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Accused of being some kind of a military operation inflicted
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: upon Venezuela specifically so that they would be able
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: to restrict everybody else's access but bring Israel in
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: and elevate Israel's standing with Venezuela.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and dissident, she is slowly but surely turning into Maria Carina Machado.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: Sad, but true.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Now U.S. imports.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so we get back to Middle East Monitor.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: U.S. imports of Saudi crude fall to zero for the first time since 1985.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: Now part of that, of course, is the Strait of Hormuz being closed.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: But that's not all of it.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: U.S.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: imports of Saudi crude oil fell to zero in July for the first time in a full month
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: in more than 40 or 50 years.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: The
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: decline comes after months of disruption to Saudi exports caused by the conflict
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: between the U.S.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: and Iran,
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: which disrupted crude oil flows through the Gulf and led to the disclosure of
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: the Strait of Hormuz.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: Disruption forced U.S. refineries to seek alternative sources of supply.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Data showed that Saudi crude shipments to the U.S.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: stopped completely in July compared with the beginning of the year when U.S.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: refineries were importing more than 800,000 barrels a day of Saudi crude.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: What they're doing now is they're tapping the SPR.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Against this backdrop, where did I go?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: U.S. refiner Phillips 66 reduced crude supplies to the Middle East to less than 1%
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: of its total refinery feed stocked.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, their CEO added that the company replaced part of its foreign supplies
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: by transporting light U.S. crude to its refinery in New Jersey.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just sourcing it domestically.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: We had it here, but only until we run out.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: Venezuela emerged as one of the biggest beneficiaries of the shift away from Saudi crude.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: U.S.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: imports of Venezuelan oil rose to around 600,000 barrels a day in July compared with
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: about 100,000 at the beginning of the year.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what the kidnapping of Maduro did.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: It opened up 500,000 barrels a day in helping us replace Saudi crude,
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: which had to be transported all the way across the world with Venezuelan crude.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: We also know that Chevron is the only American company,
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: to my knowledge, that was being allowed to export Venezuelan crude from there.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: All right, so that's another thing that I wanted to point out.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: This one, I like this guy a lot, Para Power Mapping.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure many of you follow him.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a really long article that he wrote and published at both Substack
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: and Patreon.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's available to all.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's free to all.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: But please support him if you can.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: So he wrote out and explained what this is in a thread which I will read.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: He says,
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote a new article,
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: I painstakingly reconstruct how Epstein and Trump coordinated Miss Universe and
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: an underage modeling competition that were both staged in Ecuador in the summer
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: of 2004 with overlapping panelists, contestants, and organizers.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: The Clinton Foundation provided diplomatic support to Epstein and Maxwell
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: while they attended the Jean-Luc Brunel orchestrated event in Guayaquil,
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Contacting the U.S.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: Ambassador to secure fuel for the Lolita Express due to a shortage.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: This was one of the Clinton Global Initiative's first ever orders of business,
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: assistance rendered even prior to the disguised million-dollar loan
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: that Epstein gave in October of 2004 to finance
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: the inaugural Davos-esque conference.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: Money's routed through the European advertising and PR agency Publicis Group,
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: which was chosen by Ghislaine because they were Robert Maxwell's old firm,
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: and former Clinton staffer Mary Morrison was working there,
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: briefly overseeing the Clinton project at the time.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: There's a much higher than zero chance that the fuel
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: the embassy helped furnish Epstein and his local pilot Larry Vysosky with was used
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: to fly barely above preteen girls back to the States.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Coordinated by our ambassador.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Continuing the thread,
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: I show that the winner of the Models New Generation contest was
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: a 15-year-old Brazilian supermodel who already had a contract with Brunel
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: and Epstein's agency and who'd flown in on the Lolita Express
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: on multiple occasions prior to the pageant.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Basically irrefutable proof confirming the recollections of teen girls between
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: the ages of 14 and 19 who were shipped in from nearly 40 countries around the globe
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: to spend 10 days in Guayaquil and And Salinas suffering the advances
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: of coke-addicted Brunel, Epstein, and Maxwell.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Girls who allege they were explicitly promised that they would win the competition
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: if they simply attended.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: And who have testified to the press that Brunel was dating one of the underage people.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: Awful.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you there, McHale.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: One of the organizers,
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: a modeling scout named Sergio Cordero and the former bookkeeper of MC2,
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: both have attested that Brunel was under pressure to furnish Epstein with minors
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: because he was physically attending the pageant held along
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: the Malecon del Salado Promenade.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: And there's pictures from the newspaper from that competition.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: He says,
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: I show that the Ecuadorian Minister of Trade under the Lucio Gutierrez government,
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: the former ambassador to U.S.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: Ivan Ibaki,
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: who happens to be a dear friend of Trump's,
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: Conceived of the plan for Ecuador to host Miss Universe on Trump's plane in
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: the early 2000s,
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: then hand-selected clinical psychologist Maria del Carmen de Aguayo
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: to be Miss Ecuador's new president in 2003.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: Unsurprisingly,
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: this same woman who organized the Miss Universe finals in Ecuador at Abaki
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: and Trump's behest was also the director of operations for Epstein
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: and Brunel's Models New Generation event less than two months later.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's implying that this woman had harnessed the powers and budget of the Ministry
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: of Trade and Industry to support both events.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: Incredibly, the strategy was to improve Ecuador's perception in standing on the world stage.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: Through them,
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: in hopes that it would help the country to land a free trade agreement with the U.S.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: that would build upon pre-existing duty-free incentives related to Ecuador's support
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: of Plan Colombia,
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: the counterinsurgent war on drugs that Epstein and Ghislaine also factored into
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: by secretly running or overseeing weapons shipments to the Colombian military
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: at Tola Maida, as I've argued.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, Ivan Ibaki is a board member of this Terjeiro Larsen's UN-adjacent NGO,
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: the International Peace Institute,
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: that's not shady or anything, that Epstein also credibly connected to as well.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: Trump pulled strings with the
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Comprador-Lenin-Moreno government to get Ibaki
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: a second stint in D.C. as ambassador during his first term.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: So he asked for her and they complied.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: One of the most incendiary revelations,
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: this is gross,
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: I discovered that the CEO of the Modeling Academy that worked most closely
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: with Brunel and Epstein on models new generation in Guayaquil and Quito is He was
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: a Navy officer of the Ecuadorian Armada who attended multiple programs at U.S.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Naval Colleges and at the William J.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense,
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: more recently basically the New School of the Americas.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: He retired from the Ecuadorian Navy right as the U.S.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: was ramping up the installation of a forward operating location at the naval base
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: in Manta where he'd spent time.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Seems highly conspicuous that he transitioned into becoming one of
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: the biggest modeling agents in Ecuador,
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: a career that brought him into contact with Cordero,
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: Brunel, and, inferably, Epstein directly out of nowhere.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it just so happens that Epstein and Maxwell crop up at Colombian airbases and
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: the like around the time of Israeli weapons shipments after Clinton leaves
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: the White House just a year or two before they throw this recruitment event
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: with said Ecuadorians help.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: There's compelling evidence that he, this guy, personally delivered girls to Epstein in Miami.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: Read the piece.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to actually write his name out because I don't want to wake up with
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: a saccadio standing over me in my unlit bedroom some night.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: You get me.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: So he says, here's the actual link to the piece, free to read.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, the whole essay is split into two posts because it's 20,000 words.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: What he's outlined in this thread is largely contained in the climax of the second article.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to get straight to that, there's the Patreon link.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm actually going to include the Substack link to part one,
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: where he talks about, again,
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: Epstein class,
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: traffics in Ecuador,
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: offshore info wars, port mafia, banana narcos, and the whistleblowers.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Parapowermapping.substack.com.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Go follow him over there.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: I know that was long.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: I got more.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Getting back to Indie Media Award honorees.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: Dave DeKalb over at antiwar.com.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Haven't talked about Ukraine much.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: There's been basically a standstill,
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: but Ukraine now seems to be stepping up its attacks and going deeper
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: into Russian territory.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: So here...
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: We have from Dave,
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: Ukrainian drone attacks in Russia hit oil refineries,
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: killing at least two civilians.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now remember, the oil refinery thing links to the Richard Medhurst global war on energy.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: So taking out Russian oil refineries serves the U.S.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: and Israel's purposes as well, as well as Chevron.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: Ukraine launched another major drone swarm into Russia Thursday,
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: killing at least two civilians and hitting two oil refineries,
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: attacks that came after a day of major Russian missile strikes in Kiev.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Igor Kovalchuk,
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: the acting governor of Russia's Bryonsk Oblask,
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: said that the two civilians were killed by Ukrainian attacks on towns in the region,
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: which borders Ukraine.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: He said that one of the attacks hit a car, killing the driver and injuring five others.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: In Russia's Yaroslavlóblost,
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: which is about 160 miles northeast of Moscow,
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: that governor reported the largest ever attack by enemy drones,
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: saying that 93 targeting the region were intercepted.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: Russia's Defense Ministry reported that its forces shot down more than 600 drones
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: over multiple Russian regions and the black in Azov seas.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: Urvaev said that oil storage tanks were hit by falling debris and photos from
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: the region show large plumes of black smoke following the attack.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: Ukrainian President Zelensky also claimed an attack on an oil refinery in Ufa.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: The largest scenery,
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: the largest city in Russia's Bashkortostan,
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: which is over 800 miles from the Russian border.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's far.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that means that Ukraine is really penetrating into sovereign Russian territory now.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: 800 miles.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Though it hasn't been confirmed by local authorities that that's what happened.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: While Ukraine has been repeatedly able to strike Russian oil infrastructure
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: in attacks that are supported by U.S. intelligence, what a shock.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: Reuters reported Thursday that Russia's oil output rose slightly in July.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: The attacks also haven't had an impact on the front lines
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: where Russian forces continue to hold the momentum and are slowly making gains.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the output may have risen, but...
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Were the tankers hijacked?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: Were they able to deliver because of blockades?
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: I know there was output.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: A Ukrainian attack in Russia's Tver region on Thursday also hit
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: a warehouse belonging to Wild Berries,
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: a Russian online retailer that's become a frequent target of Ukrainian drones
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: in recent weeks.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: Russia strikes on Kiev on Wednesday targeted multiple Ukrainian retailers and killed
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: at least 17 people, including six employees of a food retailer.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I don't advocate for murdering any civilians.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: I don't.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, Ukraine bombed its own Russian-speaking people and has...
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Attacked Russia repeatedly for years and has tried to, look,
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: they provoked this and they're dealing with it and they wanted a war against NATO
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: and now they've got it.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, at least Russia, they wanted NATO to defend them.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: NATO wanted the war against Russia and now they've got that.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: Dissident Blinken in 2023 basically admitted that the Nord Stream bombing was
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: about making Europe more reliant on U.S.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: and not Russian oil and natural gas,
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: which gives a lot of credence to this Medhurst theory.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I also wanted to bring from Truthout some more good news,
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: but it's not such great news because...
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: This is important,
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: and while this is good news,
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: the 18 cases that have been lost are really substantial.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: But the good news of the headline is that the Trump admin has lost 75
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: of 93 First Amendment cases.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, great.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: But what does that do for the Prairieland 16, you know?
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: So...
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: A review of court cases finds the Trump admin has been challenged dozens of times
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: for violations of multiple First Amendment protections since Trump took office,
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: losing in eight out of every ten instances in district federal courts across
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: the country.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: According to a report from Reuters which conducted the review,
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: there have been 93 challenges to actions taken by the White House
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: since Trump's second term began.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Of those cases, 75 have resulted in rulings against the admin.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: How many of them have been appealed?
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: Here you go.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: The challenges and losses are extraordinarily high.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: For comparison,
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: during the four years of the Biden admin,
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: there were 27 First Amendment challenges at the district court level,
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: only 13 of which resulted in rulings against the White House.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: The challenges included claims that Trump
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: The Trump
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: admin
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: did challenge some
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: of their district court losses,
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: appealing to higher federal courts for them to be overturned.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: In total,
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Reuters found that 15 of the 75 that went against the admin were either reversed
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: or received a temporary injunction.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: Still, that means that 60 of the 93 First Amendment challenges remained intact.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Trump frequently campaigned on the idea that he'd be a protector of free speech
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: and religious freedoms,
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: but only of the speech that he likes and the religions that he likes.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: He's also championed himself as a supporter of a free and open press,
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: only if they're favorable to him.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: In practice,
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: his protections have been highly selective and he's used his powers as president
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: to intimidate those he perceives as enemies.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: Trump's view of religious freedom,
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: for example,
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: seems to extend only to Christian Trump supporters and Israel who seek
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: to embed their far-right beliefs within the government,
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: what critics have described as Christian nationalism.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: Trump appears to have fully embraced this view,
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: particularly since some of these followers view him as a figure sent by God.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: Trump's attacks on the press have also been numerous
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: and have included veering female journalists by using misogyny and name-calling
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: when they challenged his narratives,
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: using the investigatory powers of the Justice Department to examine phone records
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: of journalists and their family members,
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: And floating the idea of filing treason charges against journalists
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: over their accurate reporting on the Iran war,
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: among many other attacks on the press.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: And this continues beyond.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: Poor Chris over at TrueTap.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: This article came across my list last night,
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm like,
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: It kind of triggered me a little bit,
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: but at the same time, I don't know if I can argue with it.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't really cite Yasha Levine very often from Nefarious Russians,
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: but this one was intriguing,
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: and I want you guys to go and read this one on your own without me.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: Are most content creators drug addicts?
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: And he's not just talking like weed, he's talking like Adderall, like uppers and downers.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: The business is practically designed to create and attract addicts.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: The internet and social media are real addictions in and of themselves.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just the people who consume the content.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: People who make the stuff are just as addicted and possibly more so.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Now the thing that made me most mad about this is
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: that it was Taylor Lorenz announcing in Wired Magazine that she spends 17 hours
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: a day on screens that triggered this whole thing.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, social media's addiction is a massive problem in and of itself to
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: the increasingly whipped-on creator class and the terminally online.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: But what I'm referring to here is regular drug addiction.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: The people who make internet content seem primed to be addicts themselves.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: Just the nature of the content economy,
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: social isolation,
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: brutal nonstop,
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: always on churn it requires,
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: the vampiric nature of the work,
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: the whiplash emotional highs and lows of the publishing cycle,
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: demands that you either have an obsessive or workaholic personality,
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: guilty, and or you develop a massive drug problem, not guilty.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uppers for keeping up with the workload,
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: churning out new content,
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: engaging the content army, the comment army, keeping up with subscriber threads.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: And downers for unwinding at the end of the day.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: I just smoke weed all day.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: Cannabis.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: So drug, yes.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: But no uppers and downers.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's dabbing all day.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: But read this article.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's really interesting.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it's an interesting perspective.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I got two more.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I wanted to talk about this.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, did you guys know that last year, Gannett, everybody know who Gannett is?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: Gannett, like, media company.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: They own the USA Today.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: And news outlets around the country, newspapers and news websites that go with them.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: I must have missed this.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think I was on vacation at the end of October last year.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: Apparently they rebranded last October or November and relaunched as USA Today Company.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: So now Gannett, which was the parent for USA Today, now it just calls itself by that.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: So...
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: What's going on here is that USA Today company,
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: but it's much more than the USA Today,
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: has made a deal with Palantir to analyze and monetize user behavior
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: the company announced Thursday.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: In its Q2 earnings call Thursday morning,
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: USA Today Company Chairman and CEO Mike Reed told investors he expects
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: the partnership to strengthen how we collect,
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: connect,
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: and activate audience data to drive more effective and faster modernization
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: across our platform.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: USA Today owns more than 200 local newspapers in the United States,
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: along with its national daily.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: The partnership with Palantir comes as search traffic continues to fall,
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: a challenge faced by publications around the world and one
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: the New York Times mentioned in its own earnings report Wednesday.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: USA Today reported 158 million unique visitors in the second quarter of the year,
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: down from 180 million in the first quarter.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: 330 million unique visitors.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: We only have 330 million people in the country.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: This decline does not reflect lower demand for the content.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it kind of does.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: What it reflects is lower referrals from traditional search because
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: of those consumer discovery changes that we're seeing and witnessing.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, less people are using Google, more are using ChatGPT.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: Google is also scraping and getting the answer for them, more often using AI.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of factors as to why they're not actually clicking through to USA Today.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: Palantir,
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: of course,
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: has been the subject of controversy in recent months for providing its tech to ICE,
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Israeli military.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: The company's co-founder and chairman is Peter Thiel,
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: the billionaire entrepreneur who funded Hulk Hogan's defamation lawsuit
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: against Gawker, leading to the publication's ultimate bankruptcy and closure.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: USA Today isn't the only media company to enlist Palantir services.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oxel Springer,
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: which owns Business Insider,
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: Politico, Build,
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: and The Telegraph,
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: and Fox News have also partnered with Palantir for its data intelligence tools.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: Thomson Reuters has also been linked to Palantir due to ICE's use
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: of Palantir software and Thomson Reuters data.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: Really bad.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: Now they claim it's important to note all our data remains our data.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: Sure,
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: the Palantir isn't going to mix it with all the other data they have to put together
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: an even more comprehensive profile on just the pages you visit at that website.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's really just leveraging this incredible AI and software that Palantir has
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: to allow us to move so much faster and be so much smarter with
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: the data we have today.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: And take a lot of the anonymous interactions we have today and turn those
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: into known relationships.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: The more known relationships we have,
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: the more data we create,
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: which of course people pay for,
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: the more signals we create,
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: which people pay for,
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: the more actionable intelligence we have, which we can then sell to marketers.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: Roberts told USA Today employees in an email Thursday that
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: the Palantir partnership could result in better recommendations and offers based
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: on what people actually care about.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: And smarter subscription and advertising experiences for consumers and subscribers.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is just corpo speak.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: Roberts noted that World Cup coverage
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: across USA Today's network generated nearly 97 million page views,
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: with search driving nearly 65% of that traffic.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: That reinforces an important point.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: When content meets a real and urgent need, search still delivers.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: But when we're not building our future on search, even in our strongest categories.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: But they are still depending on search.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: Great content, still finds an audience, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: Fuck these guys.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now, more than that,
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: Plunderbund
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: mentions that all of these Ohio newspapers are owned by USA Today,
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: Inc., Akron, Alliance, Ashland.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's 40 of them here.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: Columbus, Cincinnati, all these local papers.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: The Cincinnati Inquirer, the Columbus Dispatch, the Times Reporter.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: These are all the big newspapers in that area.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: Plunderbund, Plunderbund, all politics, all Ohio.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's who they are.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: 14,000 followers.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: No, not Plunderbund.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, okay, yeah,
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: and right,
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: Politico's boss Springer demanded,
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: as the dissident points out,
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: actual Springer demands loyalty to Israel from their editorial staff.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: So, I think, yeah, no, that's our, that's what I had for the extended lightning round.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, Yeah, it's not getting better anywhere else, sadly.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: But where else are you going to hear about all this doomerism?
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: Support independent media because we need it more than ever.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: So many people don't want to talk about this stuff because it is depressing
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: and it is uncomfortable and it is bumming people out.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: But you need to know this shit.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: People need to know what's going on.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: Sticking your head in the sand is not helping.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: So please support independent media like McHale did.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, McHale, who went to co-fee.com slash Indie News Network, and he put some money down.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: Cash app, dollar sign, Indie News Network.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: You can do it that way.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: It'll go right to my phone.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: We can send it right to the bank account.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: No fees.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: You can do it over at IndieNewsNow.com.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: There's a section to keep the news free and tip the network there.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then innnewsletter.com and indiemediatoday.com.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: You can subscribe annually or monthly over at Substack.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: Support independent media because we need it more than ever.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: There we go.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: I love y'all and I'll see you next Tuesday night.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: No!
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: We just fucking lost the stream!
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: I guess this isn't such an awful place Is that what you want me to say?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be right back.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: You were sad.