Latest / DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas / Another Israeli Settler Attack on Journalists | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

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Another Israeli Settler Attack on Journalists | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas · DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

0:10
Good morning. It's Thursday, October 8th, 2026.
0:14
And this is DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl
0:16
Thomas. Here's what we've got for you this morning.
0:19
Another attack by Israeli settler terrorists
0:23
in the West Bank. This time, the victims are
0:26
photojournalists of Agence France-Presse,
0:29
also known as AFP. We'll get into that. Also,
0:34
we've got the death of María del Carmen Abascal.
0:39
You'll remember we covered this on the show.
0:42
She was an 87-year-old lady who was evicted
0:45
from her home in Madrid, prompting widespread
0:48
protests in Spain. Her landlord backed off and
0:52
promised to reduce her rent rather than jack
0:56
it up as they were planning after they evicted
0:58
her. She was looking forward to going back home,
1:00
but I guess the stress was too much and she succumbed
1:03
to the stress of that. Old people are fragile,
1:06
man. She's a martyr. She's going to be a martyr.
1:09
She is a martyr. I hope that the people themselves.
1:11
They're going to have her face as a rallying
1:14
cry. They killed her. They killed her. That's
1:17
going to be a rallying cry. Well, they murdered
1:19
her. They did, objectively. That's what
1:24
they're going to use. They killed her. Remember
1:26
the whatever her name is. Just like they said,
1:28
remember the name. They said, remember the sofa.
1:31
Abascal. And she had a nickname that jammed all
1:34
her names together. So Italy's Prime Minister
1:39
Giorgia Meloni has introduced a new law that
1:43
she's hoping will make Italian politics more
1:47
stable. At least that's what people who are in
1:49
favor of the law say. Other people say it's anti-
1:51
democratic. We'll get into that. A lot of death
1:54
penalty news. Major Nidal Hasan will be executed
1:57
by firing squad at Fort Hood on December 3rd.
2:00
Christa Pike is not only talking to her attorneys,
2:03
she's also walking now. And Governor Gavin Newsom
2:08
is term-limited, and he's preparing to wrap up
2:13
his term for a probable run for the White House.
2:16
And he's thinking about commuting all 563 death-
2:21
row prisoners in California all at the same time,
2:25
obviously with an eye toward balancing the politics
2:29
of it, either way. Obviously, I think
2:33
this would be a good idea for a variety of reasons.
2:36
But I think it's obviously
2:38
it would open him up to a certain
2:41
line of attack from law-and-order Republicans.
2:43
So that's what we've got. It probably would help
2:47
him get the nomination, though. Yeah,
2:50
it falls in line with Democratic politics. It
2:53
doesn't. Agreed. Totally agreed. All right.
2:59
So with that, please like, follow, and share the
3:02
show. Today's Thursday, which means we're a one-
3:04
hour show today. We go until 10 a.m. Eastern
3:08
time. If you're watching live, put your questions
3:10
into the live chat. We appreciate and prioritize
3:13
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3:16
paid. We ask you to please subscribe to the show
3:18
if you're not already doing so and you're
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able to afford it. Five, ten, or twenty dollars
3:22
a month, different levels. We have some. By the
3:25
way, in the next two weeks or so, we're going to have
3:27
some interesting author guests. We'll
3:30
tell you a little more about that, but it
3:32
is a short show, so we should just get to it.
3:35
What do you want to talk about first? Let's
3:39
talk about Spain, since we kind of dipped into
3:40
it already. Cool. All right. So, oh, and by the
3:44
way, Efiso says thanks for the dollar. Wes
3:49
Craven's The Hills Have Eyes. The hills have
3:52
eyes. A little bit more terrifying. By the way,
3:54
I love Wes Craven. Yeah, no, that's true. Okay.
3:58
So, yeah. So the lady in Spain is named María
4:01
del Carmen Abascal. And I apologize for my Spanish
4:04
mispronunciations. She's 87 years old. She was
4:07
evicted from an apartment that she lived in
4:11
for about 50 years in Madrid. So she
4:14
lived there under fascism, under Francisco Franco,
4:17
right? She was paying about 500 euros a month.
4:22
Her landlord tried to jack it up to 1,650, which
4:28
is more than her retirement. No way she could
4:31
have afforded that. So she was evicted for non-
4:36
payment of rent. There was a national outcry,
4:39
rallies in Madrid and other cities. People in
4:42
Spain are really furious about this, coming at
4:45
the same time as the French student protests
4:47
in a way. Things had calmed down because the
4:50
landlord had said, okay, okay, our bad. We'll
4:52
let her back in and we'll cut her rent from what
4:54
she was paying before to 450. But apparently
4:57
the stress of the eviction and everything she
5:00
went through was too much for her, and she succumbed,
5:03
and now she's gone. And she's
5:06
a martyr to gangster capitalism. It is
5:11
time to burn stuff down in her name. Yeah. Whether
5:16
she would want it or not is secondary to the
5:18
point. Yep. It's outrageous. For one,
5:20
she should have... They thought that they could.
5:23
Yeah, we can increase the amount of rent, and they
5:26
do this over and over again. There wouldn't have
5:28
been protests if this wasn't something that other
5:30
people in that country experience. Yeah, it's
5:33
one thing to say, oh, that sucks for her. But if
5:36
it was an isolated case, I don't think you would
5:38
have gotten that lightning-rod response from
5:40
all of the people in France saying, last straw.
5:43
Right. And I don't believe for a moment that
5:48
it just stopped in other parts, meaning just
5:50
because they lowered her rent doesn't have anything
5:53
to do with anybody else in Spain whose rent had
5:57
been jacked up in that particular way. And so
5:59
God bless them for their protests. It shouldn't
6:03
stop until this is something that is across
6:06
the board. And Sánchez, Pedro
6:10
Sánchez, the prime minister, called snap
6:13
elections. Those snap elections are probably
6:16
going to be on this particular issue. And I would
6:18
say that it calmed down probably because of the
6:20
snap elections, meaning it looked like the
6:23
government was responding to what the population
6:25
was effectively doing. I think the population
6:28
calming down, though, is not good. You're not
6:32
supposed to stop. You're supposed to keep it
6:34
going to keep the pressure on. Look, it's the
6:36
kind of Russian thing. Those protests are just war.
6:39
It's a low-level war, just like the political
6:42
space is a low-level war. In the same way, the
6:44
Russians kind of made the point of saying, what
6:46
is the point of a ceasefire? We are going to
6:48
keep the war going until we have a negotiation
6:50
that results in something. Same thing with Vietnam,
6:54
right? We are keeping the war going until we
6:57
get a deal to end the war. Same thing with Iran,
7:01
right? Meaning, I'm trying to point out that
7:03
these nations have realized you don't stop until
7:06
you get a deal. And until the deal is signed,
7:09
you have no deal. The political space is exactly
7:13
the same way. Letting the pressure off doesn't
7:17
help in regards to them getting what they want.
7:19
Keeping the pressure going until they get
7:20
what they want is the way to do it. And then,
7:23
after you get what you want, you have to still
7:26
be vigilant. And that's
7:28
the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, right?
7:30
And so that's the price of all hard-won rights.
7:33
She's... Yeah, it's a horror.
7:38
My father-in-law,
7:42
he's gone now, but he was my former father-in-
7:44
law, I should say. He was a landlord, and
7:48
I remember he was always
7:50
asking me, because I used to work in banking, for
7:53
investment opportunities, and he was really... Because
7:57
he was a man of the people and a leftist, even
8:00
though he was a landlord, he was very sensitive
8:02
to anything that smelled of exploitation and
8:07
profiteering at someone else's expense. I remember
8:10
he was like, please look for a brownstone in
8:13
New York City for me to invest in. I found a
8:16
few. And I remember one had a couple of rent-
8:20
controlled tenants in it on the upper floors.
8:24
And so I was like... He's like, well, it's really
8:28
expensive, and the rents, the revenues are so
8:31
low. And I said, yeah, well, the Donald
8:34
Trump approach would be to come in and probably
8:36
evict these people or buy them out, give them
8:40
a few hundred thousand dollars to get lost, and
8:42
then you could maybe make the numbers work. And
8:44
he was like, didn't want to hear it, but he's
8:47
like, I absolutely will never do that. That's someone's
8:49
home. I don't care if there's
8:51
millions to be made. I just won't do that. And
8:53
he was always like that. It was just... And I'm like,
8:56
he was so unusual. It's hard. Yeah, yeah.
9:02
I'm just saying, he gets all
9:06
the credit in the world for that, because that's
9:08
hard. And it wasn't for public consumption.
9:10
This was just him in private having
9:13
a conversation with me. Sometimes
9:15
it went to the point of ridiculousness. Taxi
9:19
medallions, there's a set number of them, over
9:21
10,000. And you have to have this stamp that
9:25
goes on the hood of a yellow taxi in order to
9:27
be a licensed yellow cab in New York. And they
9:30
can be very expensive. When I started out as
9:33
a cab driver, they were about thirty thousand
9:35
dollars. At one point they went over two million
9:37
dollars each. Then the price collapsed because
9:40
of Uber and Lyft, and that's what led to a bunch
9:42
of New York cabbies committing suicide, right?
9:45
But the point is, at one point when the medallion
9:50
was about 75,000, he was asking me about this,
9:53
and I was like, well, this is a good investment,
9:54
man. They go up. Back then there was no
9:57
Uber or Lyft. I'm like, you can't go wrong.
10:00
And if he had followed my advice, he would
10:02
have increased his money like 10-
10:05
to 15-fold within a few years. He's like, I don't
10:09
want to exploit cabbies. And I tried to explain
10:12
to him, the cabbies get paid
10:15
what they get paid regardless of the value of
10:17
the medallion. It's a separate economy.
10:20
It has nothing to do with it. Your
10:23
making money is not going to come at the
10:25
cabbie's expense, which is true. And he,
10:28
maybe in a very abstract, indirect way, but not
10:32
generally speaking. And in fact, actually, the more
10:34
that the cabbies make, the more the medallions
10:36
are worth, and vice versa, because the income is
10:39
what gives the value to the medallion.
10:42
But even so, even in that abstract way, he was
10:46
like, no, it just feels like exploitation. I
10:49
just can't do it. And so that's really
10:53
unusual. And it says... And I think when
10:57
you're evaluating why am I a socialist
10:59
as opposed to a capitalist, it's because the
11:03
incentive structure under capitalism is to be
11:06
cruel and ruthless and to evict 87-year-old women
11:10
to make a few extra euros. The incentive
11:13
structure in other economic
11:16
systems isn't that brutal, and that's why I prefer
11:19
them. I have a question for you, Ted. Your
11:22
former father-in-law, he was all about Taiwanese
11:25
independence. Yeah. Well, Taiwan's a capitalist
11:28
country. So if he was against the exploitation
11:31
of workers, why would he be for independence
11:33
for an island nation that's founded on the concept
11:38
of exploiting island workers? Well, first of
11:40
all, I think he would have been very happy to
11:44
see Taiwan become a fully socialist country,
11:48
a free Republic of Taiwan. But there was also
11:52
an indigenous-rights aspect to his independence.
11:56
He was ethnically Taiwanese. So he wasn't Han
12:00
then? He was part Han, but mostly Taiwanese.
12:04
So he viewed the KMT government at the time as
12:09
being invaders from the mainland. So there was
12:15
that aspect too, because these people are suppressed.
12:18
Roger. Yeah, that's hard. When you're in a company
12:26
and the company has a mandate to maximize its
12:31
profit, yeah, then by definition, exploitation
12:34
is just kind of... You can literally be sued
12:36
if you're an officer or a board member of a publicly
12:40
traded corporation and you fail to maximize short-
12:43
term profits for your shareholders. You can
12:45
be sued in an American court for failing to maintain
12:50
your financial... What's the word? God, there's
12:54
a term for this. But anyway, you have an obligation.
12:56
You have a fiscal obligation to the shareholders,
12:59
right? Fiduciary responsibility. Yeah, fiduciary,
13:01
yep. Yeah, fiduciary responsibility. Meaning,
13:04
kicking that woman out was the job. Right. If
13:08
it was an American company. It's not a bug, it's
13:10
a feature. That's a feature, kicking her out.
13:13
That would be something that they were supposed
13:14
to do, because the system tells them that that
13:16
is your job to do. And the moment you get a machine,
13:19
well, the machine doesn't really care, right?
13:21
Yeah, that's exactly it. What's crazy
13:24
is even the cops who showed up to evict her may
13:28
have felt personally awful about what they were
13:31
doing, but felt compelled that this is just part
13:33
of, I follow the job. I just... Yeah, it's
13:38
like in V, the sci-fi series, there's
13:42
a scene where the cops, local cops,
13:45
are operating under enemy alien
13:48
control, space-alien control, and they're like,
13:52
I don't know, I don't want to. One cop tells
13:54
the other, his partner, I don't really want to
13:55
do this. And he's like, dude, this is our job.
13:58
We just follow the orders they give. We
14:01
follow them no matter who's in charge. And that's
14:03
true. Yeah. Yeah. What he was doing is hard.
14:08
Yeah. Everything in you tells, meaning every
14:12
mechanism of the system tells you to do it. And
14:15
the only thing that tells you not to do it are
14:18
values. Right. And most people are not going
14:23
to make that decision. No. So, F.U. So About
14:27
says thanks for another donation. About 146,000
14:30
older adults experienced homelessness, according
14:33
to HUD. HUD is the Department of Housing and
14:36
Urban Development. That's an increase of about
14:38
six percent from 2023. Yeah, older adults,
14:45
many, many people. Not in this country. We have
14:49
millions of vacant housing units,
14:52
including in luxury neighborhoods where people
14:56
are just warehousing units that are completely
14:58
unoccupied 365 days a year. Well, and you
15:02
spend billions just giving money for wars,
15:04
like, take Ukraine by itself. Let's pretend
15:07
for the moment the Ukraine war didn't happen,
15:10
and let's say the hundreds of billions of dollars
15:13
that we've invested don't get invested in Ukraine.
15:16
What would they have used the money for? Or what
15:20
could they have used it for, right? I'm saying,
15:23
what would they have done if the war for Ukraine hadn't
15:26
taken place? Tax cuts for the rich. Yeah, right.
15:28
Or they would have found something else to put
15:30
it in. It would never have gone into homelessness.
15:32
No. They would never have said, hey, let's just
15:35
get rid of homelessness. No, and you could. Yeah,
15:40
you could. There's about half a million people.
15:43
There's about 700,000 people who systemically
15:46
sleep outside every day in the United States.
15:48
There's several million more
15:50
who are functionally homeless, couch-surfing at
15:53
their friends' and relatives' houses.
15:55
But you could absolutely, if you crunch
15:59
the numbers, and it's in my book, What's Left, you
16:01
can totally solve homelessness overnight in this
16:04
country. Yes. And I'm just making the point of
16:07
saying we spent hundreds of billions in Ukraine.
16:10
And if the war hadn't taken place, they would
16:12
have found something else to use the money for.
16:14
And if the war hadn't taken place and people
16:17
would have made the argument, why don't you use
16:19
$10 billion, $20 billion to get rid of homelessness?
16:22
They would have said, we don't have the money
16:23
for it. So, Mr. A. Lee, who I do respect and
16:28
usually agree with his comments, but he said
16:30
there's no such thing as Taiwanese. Those people
16:33
are from the mainland themselves. They didn't spawn
16:35
from the soil. Well, it is an island, so obviously
16:38
they came from somewhere else, and many of them
16:40
did come hundreds of years ago from the mainland.
16:42
But ethnically Taiwanese people are also substantially
16:46
descended from Polynesians. They came in dugout
16:50
canoes from the South Pacific. They are ethnically
16:54
distinct. They look different. If they die
16:58
and you find their bones, the cops can tell
17:00
you this person was Taiwanese as opposed to this
17:03
person who was Han. They are ethnically
17:05
distinct. They have different DNA. It's not the
17:09
same. Everybody came from somewhere, right? Everybody
17:13
comes from somewhere. Yeah. Okay, the Dead
17:17
Meme Club. Did you all see that UPS accidentally
17:20
sent China an F-35? A UPS? A United Parcel
17:24
Service? I feel this is too ridiculous to be
17:27
true. Oh, why are we using UPS to ship military
17:30
tech? I guess it is UPS. The big brown truck
17:34
showed up with an F-35. I want an F-35. I'm
17:37
going to order one. Don't you want an F-35,
17:40
Jamarl? I want an F-35. Hell yeah. It's a lot
17:45
faster than the subway, I'm going to say that.
17:48
Gas is expensive enough. I'll pass. I suppose,
17:54
but it sounds ridiculous, but it could
17:59
be true. Meaning, we use private industry
18:04
for all sorts of stuff, military-wise. Yeah,
18:07
that's true. The mail service. It's true. It's
18:10
really shocking. No, it wouldn't. It's not shocking
18:12
at all. All right, we have a lot to talk about.
18:14
Short show. What do you want to talk about
18:17
next? Should we talk about the death penalty stuff?
18:19
Yeah. So, and just, you can present it one more
18:24
time just for the audience. OK, so basically,
18:26
death penalty, slash capital punishment,
18:30
is really in the news right now, largely because
18:33
of Christa Pike, who in the modern era is the
18:36
only person known to have survived a serious
18:39
execution attempt by an American state. Other
18:43
people have certainly done that in the past.
18:46
Christa Pike in Tennessee is now in the hospital.
18:49
She's talking to her attorneys. She woke up confused
18:52
and a little peeved that no one she knew was there.
18:55
She had a tube stuck down her throat. Her arms
18:59
have been inflated up like a surgical glove,
19:02
blown up. Her esophagus is swollen because she
19:07
can't, and so she can't eat. Anyway, at one point,
19:12
they were thinking about pulling the plug on
19:14
her, on the ventilator, but then they're like,
19:16
no, no, no, not dead yet. She's not dead. And
19:20
so now she's up. She's walking around and talking
19:23
to her attorneys. The judge seems to be ruling
19:27
in her favor on pretty much anything. And now
19:32
Governor Lee of Tennessee has to decide whether
19:35
he wants to take a third stab at the apple or
19:38
whether he's going to commute this to life without
19:41
parole, which is what her attorneys are asking
19:45
for. It seems like not a big ask. I think, personally,
19:49
I agree with you, Jamarl. I've been thinking about
19:51
it since you said it yesterday. Let her go. Let
19:54
her fucking go. Anyway, Major Nidal Hasan is
20:00
going to be executed at Donald Trump's personal
20:03
order by firing squad at the same base, Fort Hood,
20:08
in Texas, where he killed 13 people and wounded
20:12
32. This was 17 years ago, in 2009. I
20:19
feel awful about that, especially because this
20:21
guy, he basically suffered PTSD by proxy. There's
20:25
very little doubt about it. He was an Army
20:27
psychologist who was treating our Marines, psychologists
20:31
treating returning Afghan and Iraq War fighters,
20:35
as Hegseth would say, who were coming back from
20:38
the war messed up and relating their experiences.
20:40
It is, I'm sure that psychologists
20:44
are supposed to have supervision, but
20:47
the military didn't provide him proper supervision.
20:50
And he kind of lost his mind and became catatonic
20:54
and psychotic, according to his, before this
20:57
incident. And his colleagues reported,
20:59
nobody gave a shit. Finally, he snapped and carried
21:03
out this dreadful mass shooting on the air base.
21:06
And now he's going to be executed. He's in a
21:09
wheelchair. He was shot that day by the MPs.
21:12
So they're going to have to either figure out
21:14
whether they're going to shoot him in the chair
21:16
or pull him up, I swear to God, pull him up and
21:21
tie him to a post and hang him there like crucified
21:24
while they shoot him. So that's great. And they
21:27
have to figure out... The last time the Army killed
21:30
anyone by firing squad was that guy, Eddie Slovik,
21:35
right? That was during World War II. He was a
21:39
deserter. He had what they used to call... What
21:44
was that they called that? What was it?
21:46
Not trench fatigue, but now it's PTSD. It's
21:51
PTSD. But anyway, what they
21:55
used to call shell shock. Yeah, that's it. He had
21:58
shell shock, which is now PTSD, and
22:02
anyway, there's a movie
22:05
about it. He was just a broken kid, and
22:08
they executed him, and it was just... That's the
22:12
last time the Army did this. And finally, Governor
22:15
Gavin Newsom, almost certainly running for president
22:19
starting next year for 2028 for the Democratic
22:22
nomination, is contemplating doing the same thing
22:26
that George Ryan, the ex-governor, did in Illinois,
22:30
right? When he left, the Innocence Project kept
22:35
finding that one Illinois death-penalty resident
22:39
after another was actually innocent, and he got
22:42
tired of the whole thing, and he ended up commuting
22:45
every death-penalty sentence in Illinois to life
22:49
in prison. And that's what Newsom is thinking
22:52
of doing in California. California hasn't executed
22:54
anyone in 30 years anyway. So it's kind of
22:57
stupid to be maintaining the gas chamber and
23:01
the whole infrastructure at San Quentin when
23:05
you're probably never going to use it politically.
23:08
I think the death penalty in California
23:10
is dead anyway. But he's worried that this will,
23:14
that he'll get criticized. Not that.
23:18
So, yeah. Yeah, Newsom, I think, should just
23:25
do it. It's California, right?
23:28
Supposedly it's a liberal space. It's a super-
23:32
majority Democrat. Democrats tend to be against
23:34
the death penalty. So there's nothing. Meaning,
23:38
even if he runs for president, you can make the
23:40
argument about why you did it. You can
23:43
make that argument. That argument will work for
23:45
your particular side of the political space.
23:47
I don't think there's a hedge against him
23:50
doing so, especially as you point out, it's not
23:52
like they've executed somebody in 30 years. And
23:54
so you're spending all of this money. If I, correct
23:57
me if I'm wrong, the death penalty is more expensive
24:01
than life in prison. Oh, much more so. Yeah.
24:04
Yeah. I know it's... What's the word for it? It
24:08
sounds contradictory, but it sounds weird because
24:13
you would think that life in prison would
24:15
be longer just because a person is living longer.
24:17
But no, the death penalty is more expensive.
24:19
So, yeah, fiscally, I guess you can make
24:23
the argument ethically and morally, not to mention
24:25
the idea that you can't necessarily always know
24:28
that the person you're killing is guilty, despite
24:31
the fact that they went through the justice system.
24:34
Even that is a little bit weird. Right. It's
24:38
like the justice system knows that it gets things
24:40
wrong, and yet it executes people anyway. There's
24:44
that. What's her name? Let her go. You've had
24:48
two bites at the apple. She was in prison for
24:49
30 years. You've tried to execute her twice.
24:52
Let her go. You don't know what you're doing.
24:55
The state of Tennessee earlier this year
25:00
had another botched execution. And the guy, after
25:04
they administered the pentobarbital or
25:07
whatever it's called, said that he was screaming.
25:11
He's like, God, it hurts so bad. It's burning.
25:15
That's not what this is supposed to do,
25:18
right? That's not the process. And again, I want
25:22
to reiterate, Christa Pike couldn't have been
25:24
more helpful. She spent an hour trying to point
25:27
her killers, her executioners,
25:31
to the right vein. Please, try over here.
25:34
Try over here. This, you might have more luck here.
25:36
She had asked to be shot by firing squad.
25:40
Maybe they could have a twofer
25:43
down at Fort Hood and do them both at the same
25:46
time. Hey, you've hired the... You've
25:48
hired them for the training. You've trained the
25:50
firing squad. Hey, maybe we can work
25:53
something out. Tennessee's not so far from Texas.
25:55
Or... And oh, she also asked if she
26:00
could be hanged. It's like, oh, there's... But there
26:03
have been botched hangings too. I take
26:06
the firing squad. I don't want that. I think
26:08
the firing squad seems more. And by the way,
26:10
the other guy, the Fort Hood shooter, I don't
26:14
know why this is complicated. And I don't know
26:15
why the state makes these things complicated.
26:17
Shoot them in a wheelchair. And I know that I'm
26:22
not trying to be brutal here. It's so outlandish,
26:25
the whole thing. Yeah, the thing feels so outlandish.
26:27
If you're going to do it, this seems straightforward.
26:29
He's in a wheelchair. Shoot him in a wheelchair.
26:31
You have all sorts of snipers and everything
26:34
else. What's the issue? I don't see the issue. Well,
26:37
maybe they think that if they stand him up, that
26:40
in the afterlife, then he'll be standing for all
26:42
of eternity, so they're kind of giving him his
26:44
legs back. I think their issue is we don't
26:47
want to shoot a man in a wheelchair, which is
26:49
what it is. What's the issue? It certainly
26:53
wasn't... He's not going to get far if he escapes.
26:55
It's certainly not. That's not the case, right?
26:57
Crawling away slowly. It's like, somehow he got
27:00
away. Listen, if you're going
27:02
to get taken out, being in a firing squad with
27:05
five guys with .30-06 rifles is about the fastest,
27:10
most efficient way that you could possibly go.
27:12
You'd never feel a thing. Yeah, the anxiety is
27:14
before you get shot. Death, it's fast. Yeah. And
27:19
then you get to decide: you want
27:20
the blindfold or not. That's the
27:24
choice. It's so funny because we're sold.
27:27
We're always sold on these newfangled high-
27:29
tech approaches. Right. And it's always like,
27:32
oh, this will be better. You remember
27:34
this. When we were young, it was like,
27:36
hey, we're going to do something. We're
27:38
going to try lethal injection. It's going to
27:40
be far more civilized. They just go to sleep.
27:43
It's not as cruel as the electric chair,
27:47
which can take time, and people are
27:50
screaming, and their flesh is on fire, and everybody's
27:53
puking in the witness room. It's going to
27:57
be much better than that, better than the gas
27:59
chamber, where that's also apparently really
28:03
horrible, and there's a gruesome mess to clean
28:06
up afterwards for the guards, and then there's
28:10
poison gas that's floating around that has to
28:12
be vented out, right? So that's really awful. It's
28:16
like, death is just awful, basically.
28:19
Hell, at this rate, they could just do
28:20
what Pinochet's Chilean
28:24
dictatorship did, where they would take leftist
28:27
students in helicopters and just fly them over
28:30
the ocean and throw them out. They could just
28:32
do that. Well, something might go wrong with
28:35
the helicopter. Truth is, I'm serious. I'm not...
28:40
Well, you'd be just throwing them out, but just
28:42
throwing them out of the helicopter several thousand
28:44
feet above the ocean, I think that pretty much
28:46
always did the job. I don't think anyone ever
28:48
survived. Yeah, but you got to pay for jet fuel.
28:51
The helicopter may have a mishap, and if you're
28:53
doing that on an industrial scale, there's a greenhouse-
28:56
gas effect. Yeah, all sorts of things. No, a bullet
29:00
is very straightforward. They don't want to do
29:03
that because, people, it looks impolite.
29:07
They don't want... What if the firing
29:08
squad guys miss? You can't miss. Yeah, but you
29:11
got five guys. They're not going to miss.
29:14
You can't miss. What do you mean, you can't miss?
29:16
You can miss. You've been to the firing,
29:18
to the shooting range, and not hit the target,
29:22
right? Ted, the next time that you come here,
29:25
and we'll take you out shooting. Now, I'll have
29:27
a .30-06. I have a Mosin-Nagant. But the point
29:30
is, you're 30 feet away. You aim at a chair.
29:35
You're saying you just aim in the general direction?
29:39
Unless you point the rifle in the entirely wrong
29:43
direction, it's impossible. You cannot miss in
29:46
that range. You can't do it. The only way they
29:48
miss is if they intentionally miss. Yeah, that's
29:52
the only way. But listen, the guillotine
29:54
is the most ecologically sound way to do it.
29:57
It's reusable. There's no waste. There's no lead.
30:01
I've never heard of a botched guillotine.
30:04
If you're going to do it, it just comes down
30:06
to what it is you want to do. Me, personally,
30:09
being a red-blooded American, I would rather
30:11
get taken out by a firing squad. That being said,
30:15
a guillotine works just as well. Problem is,
30:17
I don't have much hair up here, so picking up
30:21
a head and putting it into a box would be a little
30:23
bit harder. Yeah, that looks very impolite.
30:27
It's easier because Robby is right. You
30:29
can put a box under it, head goes off, close
30:32
the box, nobody sees the head. Move the body.
30:34
They used to use a basket. Just put it in a basket.
30:37
Just done. Yeah, but that looks bad. And also,
30:40
it's a lot of spurting blood, right? That
30:44
too. It goes off like a chicken. Well, evidently,
30:48
Tennessee doesn't have phlebotomists who can
30:50
do needles. So, no, pick your poison, literally.
30:55
It's insane. So, yeah. The issue is the drug
31:00
companies don't like their product being used
31:02
to kill people, because that's not the point of
31:03
drugs under normal circumstances. And so the
31:06
prison system has come up with something they
31:08
concocted that they thought would do the job.
31:11
That's right. But we also need, or
31:14
maybe we could go like Sophie Scholl.
31:17
She was the German resistance person executed
31:20
by the Nazis during the... I think in the '40s,
31:24
the White Rose. She and her brother were in the
31:27
White Rose resistance movement. She
31:30
was executed, if memory serves, by double-headed
31:33
medieval axe. What? Yeah, I think that's probably
31:38
what they need to do. There's also a famous abortionist
31:42
in Vichy France under Marshal Pétain during the
31:46
occupation who was executed by axe also. And
31:51
I think single-headed axe that time. Double-
31:53
headed axe seems like it would be dangerous
31:55
to the executioner. I don't know. I don't
31:58
know. You have to be handy with it. Looks like
32:01
it'd be harder. The neck is only so big.
32:03
I know. It's true. It looks like they were just
32:07
finding ways of entertaining themselves during
32:09
executions. By the way, SEAL Team 6 does stuff
32:12
like that. Like canoeing. Have you ever heard
32:15
about this? Canoeing? No. Like, they got bored
32:17
with regular killing, and so they would try to
32:19
find ways of making it interesting, so you're
32:22
trying to shoot the person and hit him in the
32:24
head in a way where it splits the head directly
32:26
open with the brain, and you think, lovely people.
32:30
Yeah, it's like you've gotten so... But I think anybody
32:35
would do that. Meaning, you get... It's
32:38
almost like you play a game and you get so good
32:40
at the game that instead of doing the regular
32:42
things of the game, you're trying to do other
32:44
stuff in the game. Like, a friend of mine,
32:47
we used to play chess, and we'd be like, okay,
32:49
let's pretend the king can move multiple squares.
32:53
Okay, well, obviously, that's not chess, right?
32:55
It's changing the rules. It's changing the rules
32:58
because you're so bored with the regular rules.
33:00
And so it's like, okay, we can kill people. We've
33:02
gotten very good at that. But what if we see
33:06
if we can split the head open? It's the human
33:08
way, right? Let's step it up. Let's step
33:11
it up a notch. Now, we're talking about something
33:13
very horrible, but... If you are doing that on
33:17
a daily basis, that's just your life. Ackley
33:21
says, free Nidal Hasan, true American hero.
33:24
I have no idea whether this is sarcastic or not.
33:27
I'm going to guess probably not. Either
33:30
way. Pardon? I hope he's being sarcastic.
33:35
Look, I think, honestly, Nidal Hasan is a victim
33:40
of American imperialism because of the stories
33:43
that he had to process. And you look at the pictures
33:46
of him. This is a man who is deeply distraught.
33:50
He looks worse than most of the paranoid schizophrenics
33:54
that you see talking to themselves
33:57
out on the street in major cities. He
33:59
looks just like it's a thousand-mile stare. He's
34:04
just not home. That's the thing. I hope
34:08
fucking Donald Trump and Republicans who are
34:10
making jokes about this online, I hope they fucking
34:13
are proud of themselves. They're killing a husk.
34:19
They're killing a guy who's already been dead
34:21
for years. They're fucking... They're
34:24
pathetic. I think they're pathetic for a different
34:28
reason. I think they're pathetic because they
34:31
created this man. Yeah. Meaning iteration
34:35
after iteration of U.S. president that has been
34:38
in office that effectively had people killing
34:40
other people abroad for money, basically paying
34:42
poor people to go kill other poor people in other
34:45
countries, which is effectively what we do when
34:47
we pay our military. Poorly paid thousands. Yeah.
34:50
It's like the rich guy said, I forget the name.
34:53
I could pay one group of poor people to kill
34:55
another group of poor people. Well, here we have
34:58
it. It's called our military. It's called the
35:00
U.S. military. And militaries around the globe,
35:03
right? And we pay other countries, people in
35:04
other countries, to do the exact same thing. The
35:06
terrorists that we're trying to get now to go
35:08
into Saudi Arabia in order to fight Ansar Allah.
35:12
Paying poor people to kill other poor people,
35:15
even though they're troglodytes, they're lunatics.
35:20
Point being made, for all intents and purposes,
35:23
he's sitting there listening to the stories of
35:25
these people who are coming back, talking about
35:26
the people that they killed when they were abroad.
35:29
And maybe... It's the case that he couldn't take
35:32
it. I don't know what it is. Maybe he was already
35:34
psychotic. Maybe the stories pushed him in a
35:37
particular direction and radicalized him. Let's
35:39
assume for the moment he was radicalized by the
35:41
stories. Then that should tell us something about
35:43
the things that he was hearing. Meaning, the stuff
35:47
that we don't particularly hear, that U.S. troops
35:49
come back and tell him, that has put him in this
35:51
particular position where he's looking at us
35:53
as the enemy, because in some respects we are
35:56
the enemy. But that's secondary to the point
35:58
that he murdered a bunch of people. Yeah, he
36:01
did. And obviously that can't necessarily be.
36:05
That is not cool. Yeah. Because you
36:08
can look at people in this country as being on
36:10
some level abused also. How can I say this?
36:17
He's still responsible, right? You've just killed
36:20
a lot of people. And many of these people consider
36:23
the U.S. military a job. They don't look
36:26
at this as, we're going out and killing people
36:30
in a military capacity and function, et cetera.
36:32
I think many of them look at it as, this is
36:35
kind of like me driving a truck, right? Right.
36:38
I think that's right. I think that is really
36:40
true. But those are different things. Yeah. So,
36:46
yeah, he's guilty. He's guilty as sin.
36:50
Yeah, I think he's crazy and should,
36:52
for that reason, walk. But most people
36:54
who are crazy and kill when they're crazy don't
36:57
walk. But see, I don't think they should walk.
37:00
You still killed a bunch of people. I guess the
37:03
question boils down to, are we culpable for our
37:07
actions, especially when we're talking about
37:08
violent actions? Not if you're out of your fucking
37:13
mind. Unless we're trying to make the argument
37:15
he's Nat Turner, which I don't accept. No, I
37:20
wouldn't make that argument. There are certain
37:24
crimes or violence I would justify. This isn't
37:27
one of them. I think if the same guy had killed,
37:32
had done the same thing at a joint session of
37:35
Congress, it would be different. And I would
37:38
be inclined to say he's Nat Turner then. Nat
37:42
Turner. That's fair. That's fair. I get that
37:45
argument. It's sort of like on 9/11, the only
37:48
murders that were justifiable were
37:53
the ones in the Pentagon. At the military bases,
37:56
right. They were the ones, decision-making centers.
37:58
Not the people on the plane that hit the Pentagon,
38:01
but, yeah. It's a military target. It's
38:05
the ultimate military target. Look, a
38:09
lot of the stuff boils down to whether you believe
38:11
that the American population is culpable for
38:13
the crimes that it commits around the globe.
38:15
Right. That was the argument. I have a cartoon
38:20
about that this week, about basically, at the
38:23
end of World War II, the U.S. prosecutors at
38:27
Nuremberg argued that the entire German nation
38:31
was collectively responsible, collective guilt,
38:34
because they failed to overthrow Adolf Hitler.
38:38
And overthrowing Adolf Hitler would have
38:40
been arguably much more difficult than going
38:44
to protest against a war here in the United States.
38:48
And yet we don't. The same country that made
38:52
that argument for the people had this very high
38:54
expectation for the people of Germany, has very
38:57
few expectations of its own people when it comes
39:00
to its own crimes. Yes. And it was true for Germany.
39:03
It's true for us. Well, it can't be true for
39:06
one and not the other, right? Right. And they
39:09
were right for saying it in the Nuremberg trial,
39:12
just like it's true here. Look, whose responsibility
39:16
is it if it's not the American population? Right.
39:20
There's literally a constitution that doesn't
39:24
separate the government from the population,
39:27
because the people in the government are made
39:29
up of people in the population. We pay tax dollars
39:31
for this stuff, right? It's representative government.
39:34
But even if it's not, right, even if it's an
39:36
authoritarian regime, even if it's a totalitarian
39:40
state like Nazi Germany, you still, I think the
39:44
whole point is that you still have that responsibility,
39:46
especially, I think, when your government is
39:49
killing people overseas. It's one thing
39:53
if you decide, it's kind of like
39:55
if you're being abused as a spouse
39:57
and you decide you're going to put up with it.
39:59
But it's another thing to let your kid be abused
40:02
by your spouse. That's worse. You don't have
40:04
that right. And similarly, we don't really have
40:06
the right to let our government kill people in
40:09
other countries. If we want to tolerate them
40:11
killing us, that's... we're stupid and wimpy. We
40:14
can do that. But we really don't have a moral
40:16
right to let our government kill anyone outside
40:19
of the United States. Right. And when they respond
40:22
to us by doing to us what we do to them, we
40:26
can't act like, oh my God, what the hell is this?
40:31
They hate us for our freedoms. Why do they hate
40:34
us? Why? Why? It's amazing. We're so nice. It's
40:38
such bullshit, right? And it's aggravating bullshit
40:43
because it's like, now we need to go murder more
40:46
people in a more direct sense. It's like, dude,
40:49
you had already been killing people, and that's
40:52
why you were hit. And you're acting like, oh
40:54
my God, I can't believe we were hit. Why are
40:57
you shocked? Why are you shocked? No, I, yeah,
41:00
it was shocking, but not surprising.
41:04
Thanks to Sean for the 99-cent donation. Terra
41:09
Preta Wild, representative government has been
41:11
utter fiction since 1789. Well, that's why I
41:14
said it doesn't matter about the form of
41:16
government. I don't think we have representative
41:18
government because we have two parties that
41:20
basically don't represent the American people.
41:22
But that doesn't absolve us from our collective
41:26
responsibility. No. But people choose. They allow
41:30
it. Yeah, we do tolerate it. We could bring it
41:34
to an end. Let's talk a little bit about some
41:38
of the killing we're doing overseas. I don't
41:40
think we can. I don't think we can. You don't
41:43
think we can overthrow the government? No, you're
41:45
talking like elections matter. They don't. So
41:48
basically, here's the comparison that I would
41:53
make. We can have a revolutionary overthrow of
41:57
the state is what I'm saying. Yeah, but people
41:59
are too drugged up for that. So let's
42:03
just... People keep trying to go, well, you have
42:06
the government that you, and I've said this,
42:08
that we have the government that we deserve.
42:09
And in some way, that's true. The issue is, the
42:14
only difference between the United States and
42:16
the Soviet Union is that we have technically
42:20
two parties, but they have the exact same platforms.
42:23
It doesn't matter who you vote for. You always
42:24
get John McCain. That's the system that we have.
42:28
I never said elections. You cannot vote yourself
42:34
out of this mess. No. As Robby said, you're
42:38
in a two-party capitalistic state. You're in
42:41
an oligarchy. Is it even two parties?
42:44
That's the brand. It's Coke or Pepsi. But technically,
42:49
it's two parties, but they're offering very similar
42:51
things. It's not like these are radically different
42:54
parties, right? And either party you get, you're
42:57
still in a capitalistic system. It amazes
43:00
me that they always say, communist China. And
43:03
they use the term communism almost as an allegory
43:05
for authoritarian, as if your two parties are
43:08
somehow... It's like they have one party,
43:11
and we have two, and that's the height of democracy.
43:14
Look, I'm going to go further here. Let's just
43:17
say we had two parties that offered as distinctive a
43:20
choice as, let's say, Bernie Sanders versus Trump,
43:22
as we talked about yesterday. Still, that would
43:26
only be two parties. That wouldn't really be
43:28
a real representative democracy. It would not
43:32
be able to represent the hopes and aspirations
43:35
of 330 million Americans. We're just too big
43:38
and diverse. Two good parties would still
43:44
be... And we don't have one good party. So I have
43:47
a question, and I'll go away because we have a
43:49
show to go, but I've been thinking about this
43:51
a lot. In the United States, I want to get y'all's
43:54
opinion on this. In the United States, we have
43:56
the ability to change the party, but we don't
43:58
have the ability to change the system. In China,
44:01
they can change the system, but they can't change
44:03
the party. It seems that the Chinese system is
44:06
superior, or am I just... Am I wrong? What do you
44:08
mean? What do you mean by we have the ability
44:10
to change the party? So, no, we're able to... We're
44:13
able to vote in a Democrat or able to vote in a Republican,
44:15
but the infrastructure never changes. It always stays
44:18
the same, whereas China is not the country that
44:22
Mao Zedong built. They have the Communist Party,
44:25
but it is not the country that Mao Zedong
44:28
starved millions of people with. It is
44:31
a fundamentally different... I would actually
44:35
go as far as to say that China is a true fascist
44:38
state in that they have business merged with
44:43
government, but business is highly regulated
44:45
by the government. If you
44:47
don't play by the rules, you put a bullet in
44:48
your head and bill your family. Yeah, but the
44:51
objectives are different. So I would say that
44:53
China is a true fascist state. I don't know what
44:56
you mean. From an economic... Fascist. It is a true
45:01
fact. If you think of the term fascist, it is
45:04
the merger of business and government. That's
45:07
what China is. You can't change the party, but
45:09
they change the system. Here in the United States,
45:12
we can't even do that. We can't even kill some
45:14
lady. It does have elements of Mussolini's fascist
45:18
economic theories, but it's certainly not full.
45:22
It doesn't go all the way. Look, I
45:26
think, look, right now, no doubt, China is a far
45:29
more vibrant, expanding, forward-looking, optimistic
45:34
country with obviously serious challenges
45:38
like birth rates and all those things, but
45:41
still they seem far better poised to handle their
45:45
challenges than we do. They
45:47
were generating greenhouse gases like nobody's
45:50
business 20 years ago, and they're like, yeah, we'll
45:53
just stop doing that, and the order goes out, and
45:56
they pretty much stop doing that, right? We can't
45:59
do that. We can't. They have a bigger
46:02
country, but they seem more able to turn on a
46:03
dime than we are. They're nimbler than we are.
46:06
Yeah, but I think there's a lot going on. I
46:08
think there's cultural differences,
46:11
like Confucianism. There's also the strength
46:15
of having 5,000-plus years of recorded history
46:20
that you can draw upon. You have a far more,
46:23
also it's a far more ethnically
46:28
varied country than Americans give it credit
46:30
for. I remember when I went to China
46:32
the first time and I looked at the currency and
46:35
there's like, I don't know, 12 different
46:39
alphabets on it. And it was like, oh, this
46:41
is such a reminder. Right. There's, like,
46:44
people who read Arabic in this country. There's
46:46
people... There's Uyghurs, there's people
46:48
from all sorts of different ethnicities. We're
46:51
like, oh, they all be people with black eyes
46:53
and black hair. But that's really just not true.
46:56
It's an empire. And it's just, I think
47:01
there's a lot going on. I think it's a good question,
47:04
though, Robby. I think it brings into question
47:07
the defects of what we consider to be representative
47:10
government. I think it's that. Because,
47:14
this is not a rah-rah for authoritarianism
47:20
or anything like that. But it does make the point
47:22
of saying a government that can say, all right,
47:25
enough of this. The defects of that sort
47:28
of government is, obviously, if they're incompetent,
47:30
it makes it that much harder for the... But
47:33
if you have the mandate of heaven and you seem
47:34
to have a competent government and you're doing
47:36
what you say you're going to do, then the population
47:38
tends to be more so in line with what you're
47:41
doing, providing you're doing it. A representative
47:43
government, we're just getting gamed, like
47:49
Mr. A. Lee points out. The government in China controls
47:51
the resources and owns the infrastructure, not
47:54
private business, although it does have... If
47:57
private business gets spicy, it can step in and
48:00
control it in ways that we don't. They're far
48:03
more directly controlling. Terra Preta Wild. Also,
48:06
the party utterly prohibits corporations from
48:09
involvement in rulership. The only workable solution
48:11
in the face of the oligarchs, in my opinion.
48:14
That's a really good point. It's that part. It's
48:17
not that I would want to give up the democratic
48:18
governance part. It's just I don't entirely believe
48:22
we have democratic governance. The Chinese have
48:24
government supremacy over corporations. It needs
48:29
to be, there has to be some level of... And separation.
48:32
It has to be. Because otherwise what you get
48:34
is this kind of infection into the democratic
48:36
process of the capitalistic system. What we call
48:39
democracy, it's not really democracy. It's a
48:41
capitalistic system with a democratic overlay
48:45
on it. The veneer of democracy, yeah. Yeah, it's
48:49
just the veneer. A very thin veneer. You would
48:52
need full control of that stuff in some kind
48:54
of way. But we conflate democracy and capitalism.
48:59
They act as if, or the capitalists act as if,
49:01
well, we have private enterprise, and
49:03
private enterprise is democracy in some way.
49:06
Nonsense. No, you can. Sure. You can vote between
49:08
Coke and Pepsi. Yeah, that you can do as long
49:12
as you have the dollars to vote with. Yeah, but
49:14
I can't do anything about what Coke and Pepsi
49:16
puts in their product. No. Good catch, by the
49:19
way, with that cap. All right. Let's talk about
49:23
Israel. Right. So two settler terrorists have
49:26
launched another attack. I shouldn't say two.
49:29
A group of Israeli settlers attacked
49:32
two Agence France-Presse reporters. One, a
49:37
Westerner, John Wessels, another, Jafar Hta, who
49:42
appears to be a resident of the West Bank, long-
49:44
time journalist. Anyway, they were shooting pictures
49:47
of an IDF soldier who was detaining a dude when
49:51
a guy, a settler, came by on a quad bike and shot
49:55
at them. One of them was shot in the foot. Six
50:00
other colonists also shot at them and stole their
50:05
camera equipment. The Palestinian journalist
50:09
tried to escape into a car, clearly marked press,
50:13
but two guys assaulted him and beat him with
50:17
the butts of their rifles. Journalists are in
50:21
the hospital. Obviously, that's happened before and
50:24
will happen again. I just wonder, I just think
50:31
it's worth noting. I just wanted to just mention
50:34
it so that people know, right? There's no difference
50:36
between the West Bank, quote-unquote, settlers
50:38
and IDF military. There's no difference.
50:42
I agree. And I get that some people say, well,
50:45
clearly there's a difference. How is there a
50:48
difference when the IDF military often protects
50:50
the settlers? Say, for the moment, that they had
50:52
security with them and they got into a fight
50:54
with the West Bank settlers. Would the IDF have
50:57
gotten involved? Now, in some cases, if the IDF
51:00
is there, the answer is yes. The IDF often patrols
51:04
and is overwatching West Bank settlers as they
51:08
beat or kill and steal property from people in
51:13
the West Bank. Yeah, they sit back and they're
51:14
smoking and laughing and watching. Yeah, right.
51:16
And the moment that those people fight back, the
51:19
IDF will most likely get involved. Meaning they're
51:22
there as security for the West Bank settlers,
51:24
these lunatics, as they go about committing violence
51:28
and mayhem. So it's like, OK, is there a technical
51:31
difference? Sure, there's a technical difference.
51:34
But if they're playing security for them, can
51:35
you really make the case that there's a difference,
51:37
especially if they'll get involved?
51:39
Now, I don't normally. I've spoken
51:42
about this in other media. Whenever
51:45
I've traveled to conflict zones, I really strongly
51:48
believe that the best, especially
51:51
when you're traveling in Muslim countries where
51:53
there's a cultural stricture in favor
51:56
of granting hospitality to the unarmed traveler,
52:00
that it's wise to be unarmed as a journalist
52:02
and just show up and explain that you're there
52:04
to tell the truth and stuff. I'm going to make
52:07
an exception when it comes to dealing with these
52:09
settlers on the West Bank. They're literally,
52:13
they target journalists in a way
52:16
that the Taliban never did to me and my colleagues
52:20
in Afghanistan. Even the Northern Alliance never
52:23
did. If they were after journalists,
52:26
it was basically to rob them and steal their
52:28
money and their equipment. It wasn't really like,
52:30
we just want to kill you to stop you from reporting.
52:33
The settlers are clearly trying to drive all
52:36
the journalists away. I think if you,
52:39
if I were asked to go report in the West Bank,
52:42
I would need an armed security detail. And I
52:45
would say, and I only want badass motherfuckers
52:47
who are willing to open fire and shoot these
52:50
fuckers and kill them if need be. I want hair-
52:53
trigger goons with me. Yeah. I need five good
53:00
goons. Give me some of those SEAL Team 6 veterans.
53:05
Right. Yeah. And be willing to shoot. Yeah, no,
53:09
don't wait. Ask
53:12
questions later. Shoot first. Hair trigger, hair trigger.
53:15
Yeah, because that's what those
53:17
Israeli, those West Bank settlers, don't deserve
53:20
any other consideration. No, they're coming to
53:23
commit violence. Yeah. When you see them, you should
53:27
think they are coming to hurt me. That's what
53:29
you should think. Yeah. I always think of... There's
53:33
a... Four days after D-Day, June 10th, 1944,
53:36
there was a massacre by the SS of all the residents
53:40
of a town called Oradour-sur-Glane. 642 people
53:43
were killed. There were only about half a dozen
53:45
survivors, just basically mostly people who were
53:48
out of town when it happened. And one of them
53:50
was a little boy who was in town, and he was from
53:54
Alsace, which is on the German border. And he
53:56
had heard all the stories from World War I. And
53:58
he looked out the window, saw the German tanks
54:00
approaching. And he said to the people he was
54:03
staying with, c'est les Allemands. It's the
54:06
Germans. Ils sont mauvais. They're bad. And he
54:09
jumped out the second-floor window, jumped off
54:13
the roof and ran into a field and lived out
54:15
his natural days as a result, right? It's like,
54:18
that's how it is with these West Bank settlers.
54:20
They're settlers. They're bad. Like,
54:23
run away or shoot them. That's basically it.
54:27
He had a gut understanding of what was happening.
54:32
Yeah. I have a question, Ted. You're anti-death
54:34
penalty, so why do you support wasting settlers?
54:38
Don't get me wrong. I'm right there with you.
54:39
I fully support ventilating the bastards,
54:41
every last one of them. Well, I'm not
54:43
against vigilantism. Yeah, that's what I was
54:46
about to say. I'm against the state carrying
54:50
this out in a cold-blooded way. That's the difference.
54:54
But you're a communist. Communism is
54:56
kind of famous for that. What do you mean, for
54:59
killing people? Oh, yeah. They're good
55:01
at it. Sure. I guess that's the difference. If
55:04
I was in a leadership position in a communist
55:08
revolution, I'm well aware that there would be
55:09
people, counter-revolutionaries, who would have
55:12
to be killed. Heads, boxes, spikes. Maybe
55:19
we'll bring in those Tennessee guys to
55:21
shoot them up incompetently, fill up the
55:25
... Those hospitals need work too. It's
55:27
true. Okay, so I don't know. This is... It's
55:32
really... Oh, Italy. We got to talk about Italy
55:35
in the time we have left, which is only a few
55:39
minutes. So Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, she's
55:42
a right-winger. She's threatened to resign unless
55:44
there's a new law passed, which basically it's
55:47
a winner-take-all kind of system. So basically,
55:51
if you have, like we have, if the election. Yeah.
55:55
If you, in this country. Right. If you get 50
55:58
.1 percent of the vote in a state, you win all
56:02
the electoral college votes in that state. So
56:05
it's like that. So the winning party or coalition
56:08
in a parliamentary election would get 70 bonus
56:12
seats in the lower house, that's like the House
56:15
of Representatives, and 35 in the Senate, provided
56:18
that they get a minimum of 42% in both houses.
56:22
I don't know how they came up with 42. So Italy
56:24
has 600 seats in the parliament, 400 in the lower
56:28
house, 200 in the Senate. So, roughly speaking,
56:32
you would get 70 out of 400 as a bonus if you
56:37
achieve 42, and you'd get 35 out of
56:41
200 in the Senate if you achieve 42 percent
56:45
in both houses. So obviously this is self-serving.
56:49
She thinks that... This, we talked
56:52
yesterday about changing the rules to
56:54
benefit you. And basically, but Italy has a
56:57
long reputation of having... It's hard
56:59
for government coalitions to stay together. I
57:01
There's been periods where every six months
57:04
or every 12 months the Italian government has
57:07
collapsed. It's kind of a feature, not a bug,
57:10
of the Italian system. I don't know. I thought
57:13
it was worth noting. It seems it's a little bit...
57:16
I don't know how I feel about it. I can argue
57:19
this one either way. Meloni has been there for
57:22
a while. She's been able to keep a stable coalition.
57:23
This seems to be a way, just self-serving.
57:27
I could be wrong, but this seems very self-serving.
57:30
What do the other parties think of
57:35
this? Well, they're against it. They
57:38
think it's anti-democratic. They're saying it's
57:40
anti-democratic, but it's just meant to solidify
57:42
her coalition and lock them out.
57:47
And obviously the other thing is, an overwhelming
57:49
bonus seats, an overwhelming majority begets
57:52
an overwhelming majority, right? You have...
57:55
You control the narrative, you control the
57:57
dialogue, in the same way that the Republicans
57:59
have been controlling the narrative in this country
58:01
for the last few years because they control so
58:04
much of the government. So it would be the same
58:06
thing in Italy if you just give people these
58:08
extra seats. It's an interesting approach.
58:13
She said she'll resign if she doesn't get her
58:14
way. It's effectively saying, for
58:20
example, so she runs in the election, she wins
58:23
a governing majority, she has to work with another
58:25
party to get that governing majority in parliament,
58:28
okay, but that's just representative government,
58:30
right? That's representative government
58:33
in a real sense. I would be against this proposal.
58:35
People... You might have 10 different parties. You
58:38
have a certain percentage of those political
58:41
parties going into office based on the political
58:44
distribution of the people within the country
58:45
itself, and she has to figure out how to deal
58:48
with these other groups and these other parties
58:50
in order to govern. That is parliamentary elections.
58:54
Correct me if I'm wrong, that's just a parliament.
58:57
You're right. And personally, I would vote against
59:00
this reform. Her issue is, well, I need
59:05
the power to do what I want when I'm elected.
59:08
That's what she wants. Right. So make alliances.
59:12
The whole purpose of parliamentary democracy
59:15
is that you're forced to make deals with
59:19
smaller parties that normally under
59:23
our system would never be heard, but they do get
59:26
heard for some issues sometimes. In a parliamentary
59:30
system, they have to make deals with those political
59:32
parties, meaning the people who are part
59:35
of those political parties who represent elements
59:39
of the government. They may not necessarily be
59:41
in the lion's share, still get something.
59:45
It's... I'm piecemealing what I do, and I'm
59:49
giving this to this particular party, and this
59:51
to this party, and this to this party, and I'm
59:53
getting what I want in order to push forward
59:55
in government. Meaning everybody ideally gets
59:57
something that is being represented, as opposed
1:00:00
to her just wanting to get her way. Yeah, exactly.
1:00:05
I understand why she wants to get her way. She's
1:00:07
very beautiful. She is not an ugly woman. She
1:00:13
is not. There are not a lot of ugly Italians.
1:00:15
Get away with me. The government is different.
1:00:19
The government is a different model. And with
1:00:22
that, that's it for today. Please stay tuned
1:00:24
for the TMI show coming up right now on YouTube
1:00:27
and Rumble Live. We will be back tomorrow with
1:00:30
a full two-hour show. It'll be Friday. We'll
1:00:33
be doing that from 9 to 11 a.m. Eastern Time.
1:00:36
DMZ also tomorrow at 11 with guest Steve Breen,
1:00:40
former cartoonist from the San Diego Union-Tribune.
1:00:43
Bye. Have a good one.