The Life N Times Podcast Ep 82

Natheer and Dre are back for Episode 82, and the topics are as heavy as ever. From red carpets to war zones, from hockey locker rooms to immigration raids, nothing is off limits and nobody gets a pass.

Transcript

Cultural Moments and Vulnerabilities

Black History Month and Ramadan

SPEAKER_00 0:00

It's Late in LA. Life and Times podcast, episode 82. Me and Jay are here to speak today. There is a lot going on. This podcast will always focus on what is going on as far as culturally, as far as the moment, as far as what's happening. Speaking about what's happening, we just had the BAFTA awards, Delroy and Michael B. Jordan, and then we had the incident with John Davidson. Now, before we get into it, I want to preface. I said I took the time out to watch the movie. The movie I swear, right? You watched it. I watched it. So I understand the level of vulnerability and how strong it is for this man at this time, especially the sensitivity to it, right? And I don't want to be able to say at all. What I can say is matters matter, right? Your matters matter. So no matter what's going on on a lot of fronts, I understand those connotations, but the core issue is that he had those connotations with the queen, and the apology happened. So if that can happen with that figure in that capacity, it should be able, it should be applicable to all parties, especially in publicized events. Far as the character of John Davidson, I do not know, and I will not pertain to guests. All I do know, and this is the facts I'm on, is that the you know, over there in the UK, the population of black people is very small. I believe it's 2%. So yeah. I believe the production moved that way for a reason, and that's a lot of the reason as far as the production on the BAFTA. I I want to hear your aspects, just your your purview on this part, just the John Davidson sector. We can get into BAFTA itself. I feel like that's an easier conversation. I feel like that's why I preference John Davidson that way. Because there's a lot of ways people are tackling it, and I don't want to be a part of the jumping on of this guy, but we do hold people accountable in an accountable way. That is all.

Understanding Disabilities and Accountability

SPEAKER_01 2:30

So I'm gonna preface this by saying, well, first off, you know, we're a deaf at Black History. Happy, we didn't say it before, happy Black History Month, happy, you know, Ramadan, happy lunar new year, happy to all the people. It's a good time of the year. I have a family member who has Tourette's, actually. And I'm someone who's on the internet a lot. I watch a streamer, famous streamer, who also has Tourette's, but doing it for years. So Tourette's is not new to me personally. Like I literally have a family member that I've known for years who has Tourette's. Went to school with him every day. This situation is not new to me. I'm not here to judge John Davidson's character for having Tourette's because I'm not foreign to the idea of Tourette's. I will judge John Davidson on his handling of the matter. Simply off of as an individual. I didn't watch the movie. I wasn't gonna give it that uh leeway at the time. John Davidson did excuse himself from the venue after it happened, even though, to my knowledge, this is apparently the third time this has been spurted. Right.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

It wasn't the first time he did it. And it wasn't just Michael V. Joe or the Delroy, it was also hair, somebody in here, and somebody else.

Public Apologies and Respect

SPEAKER_01 3:40

Yeah, yeah. So this did happen three times that night. People are excusing that. He excused himself from the venue because he said it out loud, screamed it, right? Which is also very different. I don't know if someone would put a mic too close to him or something like that, but uh, the whole venue for his voice to be the one that picked up, and people were talk all the time in those venues is interesting. But it was the lack of an apology, right? No one is asking you to apologize for having to write. What's dangerous is conflating disability with disrespect. And so you could have uh a disability that can be respected, uh, but you also have to have respect for the people that your disability could have harm for. Accidents happen, it it wasn't intentional. You still apologize for accidents, right? It's just the nature of things. The apology was very the the statement that was made wasn't an apology. It was a defense mechanism because he felt he was being attacked. And the thing is, the people that you were attacked that were attacking you were also reacting in a defense mechanism because of something you did. So there was a lot of harm being put in place in that moment between him and the black community that could have been diffused because even to this day, to my knowledge, he has not apologized to Michael B. Jordan in Delwood. He's not apologized to the two women that he called the Award. I don't actually don't know if he called it one of the inward the other two times. I know it was one time. I don't know if the third incident was him or if someone else had said it in public, but it was said three times that night. This is something that is prevalent, apparently, in the UK for people to just accept these things. But him as an individual, if you want to be given grace uh for your struggles, you have to acknowledge the harm that your struggles can cause other people, and you have not. So that's why I stand on that. That's where I stand on his character. I don't know him, but this is what the only time I've ever heard about him, this is what he has shown.

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Just to piggyback off of what you said, there was an apology sent out privately, but that's why I preface his apology to the queen. It was public. The disrespect is public. It doesn't matter how people see it or what's going on, how it was presented was publicly this disrespectful.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

So you should apologize in public if you're gonna disrespect in public.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

If you're gonna do that in public, you're gonna have to apologize in public. Now, I know you had issues with production, and really this conversation is really clear-cut with production. This is a plan. This wasn't anything but that. So, as far as John Davidson, I just want to say there was something you said about as far as his the mic location. Like they put that near him.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Yeah, they're like like I've been in large venues. People talk, chatters loud. There is no reason the mic should have picked up him saying that unless he either A screamed it or they had a mic near his location. And that, especially if they prefaced the they prefaced the showing a few times at night saying, hey, if you guys hear anything, you know, we're prefacing this with this this person as threats. Please ignore it. He's not meaning any intentional harm. Fine. Why would you keep an open mic next to them?

SPEAKER_00 7:00

And you know, I'm not gonna ignore a larger issue that's been put out since this came out, right? They're using this, right? Telling people who are affected by racism that no, this is how Tourette's works, and stop conflating this, right? It's not a conflation. You're not affected, so you don't understand. When people aren't affected, they don't understand. They couldn't even piece it together. It's foreign to them.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

But I think it's different because people understand the concept of accidents require apologies.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

If I walk by and I bump and you might drop something on you. I also think it's a lot of willful ignorance, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:42

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

Yeah, it's willful ignorance to a large point. And the latter point is using it to weaponize to attack black people. Yeah. Like I've seen it. And they want it to, they want to also use it as a dismissal for racist uh speech or conversation. They want it to be normalized for that to be okay to be said.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

Because we're on a rise of mental health problems in the world, specifically in the West. We're on a rise of mental health problems. If we can say, you know, as long as you have a disability, that's it. And if you're a little discriminatory, if you're a little racist, uh, they're just not having a good mental health day. It's just an incident.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

That's like when people who have dementia they default. How do you get that? You know? So, like it's it's a cultural thing that people are trying to use in trying to create a cultural war between people with disabilities and minority communities. So we gotta make sure these things are separated. They're very marginalized groups. Yeah, yeah, they're using the marginalized groups that attack one another. And that's another facet of this. But the thing about John Davidson is that like you have a large voice and you understand uh either he doesn't understand or he doesn't care to understand that he's being used at some point.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Right. Right. He should be he should want to be the biggest proponent of defending people who are like him. And instead of using this to set a clear example on how these incidents should be handled from someone in his position, he was like, hey, see, this is what I try to tell you about. It's hard for us. Go watch my movie. That's disgusting to me. No, because what happens when people watch a movie is in the beginning to me, what I'm told, and the opening scene was him saying something to the queen and apologizing. So what it clearly told people is you have the ability to understand that contextually, some of these things require better handling than just be like, oops, my bad. And you couldn't even do that.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

So it's all about, and this is how I think personally. I wanted to preface everything factually at first, but this is how I think personally. Y'all not the queen. That's just what it is. I don't respect your plight or what's going on. You are not the queen of my country. I do not give a fuck. Go watch my movie, dog. That center shit was cute, but you're in the UK. The population's 2%. This is how we rock. Yeah. That's basically that's how they rock. It's it's it's because you can go and ask anybody in the UK, like you see the outpouring, they're not even used to going back and forth. You know what I'm saying?

BAFTA's Production Issues

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Yeah, they so yes, the the the the back stepping that some people have tried to done because people do not understand the weight of black Americans in terms of being vocal with outrage and support and not standing for disrespect. And other groups are used to that. They're used to getting trained on by their government. They used to, we're one of the very few groups in the world who, as a marginalized group, has forced change in our government, and we did it in the largest, strongest country in the world. And so when that system gets pushed on to another country, they aren't used to handling it, or to another organization, they're not used to handling it. This is gonna financially affect them. He's gonna see a small uptick of views in this movie, right? Like this, you know, because uh people hate watch things and rage culture thing. Well, this is gonna financially affect him. This is gonna financially affect the organization of BAFTA, right? Like they they've been trying to get a lot of Americans to, you know, to participate in their stuff, especially in if if we want to switch to the BAFTA thing now. First off, black actors in UK did not see large roles from the UK. The black actors that we know that are British, that are popular, had to come to America to get roles after the black Americans pushed, getting put into more things in the film industry. And then they started getting roles in films in the UK. That was the trend. So BAFTA is not used to this, they're not used to seeing large, strong black actors who have voices and have communities behind them and stuff like this, and be able to push and control their own narrative. Black actors in the UK were not being put in roles and positions until coming to the US, getting fame here, and getting put in positions here, and getting respected here, and then going back. Because now, because the the America controls and is one of the most powerful media tools in the world, and we push our films everywhere. Now they see, oh, now we can grab money from them now that they've made it over there and they were pushed over there. So Bath does a UK thing, having black people be there on stage, well-respected black people, and then seeing them get disrespected. They're used to just laughing that off and keeping moving. That's not how we handle things. And so this is a shakeup for them. They handled this very wrong. This, first off, we thought it was live at first. And then we got told by someone that was in the audience this was a two-hour pre-recording. So they had two hours of post-production to cut all of this out. So if that alone was bad and they left that in, that's bad. But knowing the things that they did choose to cut out and leave that in, if you guys are not aware, someone went up on stage and gave a speech, and they were talking about free Palestine. They were talking about free other things. They have to cut that out in post-production. But left in John Davidson saying the hard R, there is zero excuse. There is zero excuse. They thought it was okay. They did not care. They can't even say they missed it because it was said directly at the beginning of Michael B. Jordan's speech. Right. So like there's like if you have an editing software or something, there's a quiet moment. You listen to peaks, and it wasn't like it was said over something else. Nothing else was said, then that was said, and then they had to continue on with the speech. Y'all watch it. You watch the faces of Michael B. Jordan and Del R, right? Like the editing team let that in on purpose. But they purposely cut out Free Palestine. Free this, free that. And so they just go to show as an organization, they do not respect black people. And for anyone continuing to do work with them or showing up to these award shows, that would be a shame. Because you're not respected there, and it's been shown. And we are no longer in a position where we have to put on a smile for people like this, uh, because we have other places where we're celebrated.

Corporate Responses and Accountability

SPEAKER_00 14:27

Absolutely. You see what they just did at the awards that just went through this weekend. So they can't be respected and applauded for their work and not downtrodden on. This is just a positioning thing. Thank you for the look. Thank you for all the viewership. And also, this is who we think you are anyway. So, prior to production, fire as BAFTA, I don't want nothing to do with them. I say don't participate in their shit. Don't give them any credence. They don't matter culturally, they don't matter to people who are creating from the places that they will never understand. They want them in a certain plight and just to take the light from them. They couldn't ignore Cinners' success. That's why they're so obsessed with it.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

And and it's not just BAFTA. So after BAFTA does that, Google, Google, the biggest AI data ecosystem on the planet, put out an automated response to that incident, including the hard R and the title, and Mass sent that out. And so the CEO tried to say that this was a failing on the guardrail, that it did not pick up the basically the negativity of the statement. Like the word singularly would have been picked up, but in a phrasing of that bypassed the guardrail, then I find that hard to believe, and also a level of disrespect, because especially as an American company, we put so much money and data and information into this movement of anti-Semitism, which, if we're going to be honest, has only been on the rise in the U.S. as far as a data situation and policing of speech, probably five to ten years. But the hard R has been a known US no-no for decades, right? And so the fact that this wasn't already in your system and is something that can still bypass your system in 2026 when you would have never allowed something like this if it had anything to do with Jewish people or Israel, just goes to show that we are still not respected here in America and that large corporations still do not respect and see or care about the things that cause us harm here in America. And yeah, that's just something people shouldn't be aware of. Like there's no, once again, there's no excuses for this. It just wasn't important to them. That's it. That's all it comes down to.

Gender Disparities in Sports

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Exactly, man. Exactly. There's uh game companies, they can filter out this and that. They filter out so much, but that is still the most useful one that can always slide by everything. And we know why. This is how people think and feel. Fuck it, man. Let's get into the Olympics, bro. You see your boy Cash Patel, you see the men's hockey team versus the female's hockey team. On the global stage, we're looking very clownish. We look very behind. I can't believe the mother would have the mindset of a boy's locker room. And that says a lot to people who are complicit in narratives that do not help them. And she literally is putting women behind rolling with this mindset and putting it into her sons. Like these are your children.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

Yeah. So, I mean, the cash would tell, the call with the president of the United States, who we are already very aware of the way he views women from his own mouth. The Olympics were great, first off. This in a in a sports aspect, I could talk about the fact that historically the women's have on a global scale outperformed the men's in America traditionally all the time. Uh let's talk about the fact like one of the biggest sports in the world, soccer. Men's American soccer team is horrible. The women's historically has been the best soccer team in the world. The pay difference is enormous, outrageous, right? So the the women in sports in America traditionally outperform men, but the respect they get is often lower. And it's not just we're talking about some in our own audiences, right? Because I know this is an issue that I guess brought up with like the WNBA and the NBA and stuff like that. But we're talking on a global scale. The audience is global. It's not just American. Our women's teams are better, but they get disrespected at home. They get seen as less than at home. But they go anywhere else in the world and they are champions. They are the best. And that's a shame that we're still in a position where the leader of our country and people, even in their respective sport, are treating them this way, especially after the women's hockey team congratulated the men's for their win. You know, both of our teams' winning should have been a symbol of national pride. It should have been something to be celebrated. Uh, they both fought very hard and did very well and to be seen as less than a disrespect when you come home. I mean, like, this is something that's black people we've seen, right? We used to go to the Olympics, and then, you know, we'd be on stage and they're out there throwing Nazi salutes and doing other stuff. And, you know, or we're going to war, right? We're fighting for the country. We come home, we're still second-class citizens. Right? Like, this is something we've seen, and we know how this looks, and this isn't new. Like, this is this is America. This is the true face of America. And a lot, some people are just now seeing it. I will say this is getting the outrage it's getting because the people being affected are predominantly white, right? So you're seeing a lot of white women being like, I can't believe they would do something like this. And it's like, this is how the people, this is how they've been acting, right? It's just happening to you. You were just being surprised because it's happening to you. But this was being ignored when it was happening to other people. I'm not excusing that behavior and saying it should have happened to the women's hockey team. They did phenomenal. But yeah, that's that's just the situation. This isn't new.

Immigration and ICE Policies

SPEAKER_00 20:25

Yeah, I mean, this is just uh another side effect of ignoring each other's plight, you know? It's not, it's always gonna come home to you. Even when it, like, even the men's team, if they would have lost all the jokes we would have said about them, it like the things and the narratives would have changed. So I don't understand people gotta have a collective sense as far as community and nationality and personhood and also respect. Speaking of the lack of respect, we still see how ICE is affecting these communities. ICE is pushing the government shutdown, and and we're dealing with immigration and undocumented citizens at an unrecognizable clip these days. There's people dying in process, there's children in process. There's so much going on. Like, this ICE situation is a history textbook, man. Like, we're living history, and the ramifications are gonna be insane.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

Yeah, there's a lot of um misinformation that people are at this point, I think they're just willfully deciding not to recognize. One, let's talk about undocumented statuses. Undocumented, being undocumented in America is not a felony, it's a misdemeanor. Just at a baseline, right? So, like every argument people make after that can be killed off of that. Being undocumented is not a felony in the United States, it's a misdemeanor. This country has profited trillions of dollars off of undocumented labor because it benefited them and to see people turn around and Weaponize that is disgusting. See our government turn around and weaponize that is disgusting. There's real harm being done in the communities where people are watching their neighbors get ripped out, where officers are lying about their status to go into schools and take children out of schools without notifying the family members. Using children as hostages to get family members to get arrested. I've seen a couple videos of those. This is not the way you would expect to see a functioning democratic society, as we claim to be. But this is here. Like that, like no matter what your viewpoint is, like this is the reality. This is stuff that was reminiscent of things you saw in the diaries in Germany, right? This behavior, it's being modeled, it's been studied, and that's why it's being replicated. And it's affecting a lot of people. And even if you're not concerned about the immigrants, the shutdown. I have a friend who is in the Coast Guard. They're not getting paid right now, right? But like you have people who are working industries, TSA, right? Because the shutdown affects DHS. So that's TSA, that's Coast Guard, that's ICE, all this. You have American citizens not getting paid so that people can fight and argue about funding a national uh aggravation group. And like if you care about America, that's something you should be getting care of. Like you should care about.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

Yeah. I mean, bro, we're in history. I I like I'm mentally preparing for more bad shit to happen. This whole list is a lot of ramifications in the onset of all the actions of this presidency. Like the people in charge are giving us more problems than solutions at the highest levels. Look at how these tariffs are affecting us, bro. Look at how the global economy, you see, Europe keeps getting together and figuring shit out without us, and it's gonna be fucking annoying. Not even annoying, it's gonna be disastrous.

SPEAKER_01 24:05

It's gonna cost a pretty penny. We were in a position where we had the world in our bag. Everyone was looped in with us. You couldn't do nothing if it didn't affect, like if it didn't work with an American. And we had a big fear for a long time nationally that China was gonna take over my stuff, right? They were a national security threat. And then we actively started pushing countries away from Europe was comfortable. It takes more work to break the system. People like efficiency at ease. It was just more efficient to work with the American industrial complex. Now they're going out of their way to spend more money, even if it doesn't make sense financially, to separate themselves from the American ecosystem due to the way we have leveraged their connectivity against their dependency. It was a good thing for him. Kept us rich, made things easy for them. And now they're going through the effort and they're like, you know what? We don't need America. It might get harder for us a little bit. There's other people out here to work with. And we push them into something that most people already knew. We were just ignoring. We were just like most countries, like, ah, like we don't, we're kind of stuck with these guys, but like it's fine for now. They're our allies. You don't tariff your allies just because they say something you don't like. Just because they don't agree with something you don't like. You don't raise tariffs after Congress tells you that the tariffs you put last time are illegal. You sit back and you say, okay, if this is something I want to do, how do I get this done the right way? For anyone who isn't aware, tariffs do not save you. A tariff works is that something cost$10 before, right? And we throw a 30% tariff, and now the companies that are shipping their stuff here, it costs them 30% more. They're just going to make the stuff$13. The consumer pays for tariffs. And as the states and companies start suing the government because they're giving tariff refunds of$175 billion, the companies already made a profit off of the consumer paying more for tariffs because they offloaded the price onto you. Now they're going to get a refund for the price that you already paid, and the price is going to stay the same. So now the tariffs, once they go away, the shirt still only now is back to being$10 for them to have imported and sold. But they're going to keep the$13 price because you already started paying it. And they're going to get a refund for the three extra dollars that you spent. That's like there's that's how tariffs work. For people who don't know, like every time you see tariffs, it's not good for you.

Tariffs and Economic Consequences

SPEAKER_00 26:56

It's not good for us. I tell people all the time, like, the shit sounds cool and it look cool. Like, oh, you gotta pay me. I'm upping the tariffs on you. Now we gotta deal with this shit. Europe is clicking up, they're separating from us. Other countries are separating from us. And listen, we are we could be self-sufficient. We do have all the resources here. We do. I don't have I don't have a problem. Like, there's so much unskilled labor. That could be so many jobs right there. Us reinvesting in America. So now we got people in fit. You know what I'm saying? Like, people, hey, bro, why are you on hey, what's going on? Are we gonna pay? Just like the MY with the dude didn't know.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

In New York with the shovel program? Bro.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

Yeah, bro, bro.

SPEAKER_01 27:42

You know, people complain about that? They said, look what he's using his tax dollars for. He's paying these people$30 an hour to shovel sidewalks that they're going to use. Isn't that what I would like my tax money to go to?$45 over time.

SPEAKER_00 27:56

People have a capitalistic mindset for other citizens outside of themselves. They have a personal purview. Oh, why is this happening? Oh no, no, no. But like when they think about their neighbor or their people outside their family, it's like, well, you gotta work harder, man. I don't know. I don't care what's happening. Like, it's just the purview. People uh are very capitalistic once they get outside of themselves. And they think like you, I swear to God, it's like talking to somebody who thinks they're Elon Musk. I'm like, brother, like just put the fries in the bag. You know what I'm saying? Like, this is crazy. But it is what it is. The Epstein lists and this you know, reaction is getting larger. People from other countries that have been found on it have been punished. Some people are being jailed, other people are being accosted from their positions. It is it's a lot more than what we're doing here in America for the people we find on the list and for the things we are finding about those people on that list from a witness testimony and the, you know, everything that's in the in the files. It's pretty heinous.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

What do you think should happen to the people who have evidence that they've committed wrongdoings in the files?

SPEAKER_00 29:12

You should go to jail. Straight to jail. I don't know, bro. I maybe like, all right, let's act like the people on the MC list are just black people. It's like, all right, put them in jail, right? Like, wait, wait.

SPEAKER_01 29:31

And let me be clear for y'all listening. I don't give a fuck what color you are. If there is evidence in the files that you did something.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

But it seems like it would be a lot faster, right? Yeah. Like, imagine all the like school shootings were perpetrated by black men. Let's just think about it.

SPEAKER_01 29:49

Those statistics will show up in all the new crime statistics.

SPEAKER_00 29:53

It would pop up real fast. So, like, I think a lot of the things here is, you know, you gotta have the complexion for the protection. If you are committing crimes at no matter what level, like I've seen it. Like a dude can go and kill mad people, he can kill his whole family, and they're gonna start talking about his mental health. The same dude just killed somebody, they was trying to kill him. They're not talking about his mental health. They're saying he's a product of his environment. Which one is a product of their environment?

SPEAKER_01 30:21

What's going on? And that's actually funny you bring that up because that's another situation where the mental health thing has been so overplayed in the use of harm, especially for white people in America.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

Oh, yeah, that we got fatigue on that.

SPEAKER_01 30:37

And if that once again, it doesn't matter. If you have a mental health issue, if you have a disability, that does not take away from the harm you cause. So there's that.

SPEAKER_00 30:49

We're still not cool with Kanye.

The Epstein Files and Accountability

SPEAKER_01 30:51

Yeah, no, like, bro, bro, bro has to, and I'm not gonna say it's forever, but bro has to do exponentially more consistent work to fix the communities and do work in the communities that he has harmed through his platform, than that single like apology video he did to that rabbi, right? Like, like it has to be it's gonna be a lifelong journey of coming back for him. But so I had a conversation. I I talked, I mean, everyone, everyone should be talking about the Epstein files. If you're not talking about the Epstein files to people, that's actually kind of scary and it's giving complicity. Y'all need to talk to your friends, you need to talk to your family, because the mentality of defenders of the people on the Epstein list is dangerous, and you need to find out if those people are in your life. So that's one. But I think what the Epstein list has shown us, once again, because people in power like to break us down. It's not a race thing, it's not a gender thing, right? You do see majority, right? Yes, there's a large majority of white males on that list because they were trafficking young girls and boys, right? There are victims on both sides, but it's people in power. There are black people, Asian people, white people, men and women who formulated that ecosystem, who knew about, right? People are saying, well, I didn't show up on the island. Okay, Jeffrey Epstein has been a listed sex offender since 2009. Didn't get arrested until 2019. Most of those communications you guys have are between the 2010s. People knew. Like the princess that was in like uh Norwegian, who, by the way, her son is literally on draw right now for serial assaulting. She joked about knowing that Epstein was an assaulter and they kept communication with him. But these people in power are, yeah, she was like, oh, you're such a I looked you up, you're a bad guy, or it's not looking good. Winky face, right? These people talk about these things. They there is just a complicit understanding that people who are not of status can be used, abused, and thrown out, regardless of your gender, regardless of your race. And so, like, this is another example of it's about class. It's simply about class, regardless of your race, regardless of your gender, regardless of your background, regardless of your country. These were powerful people participating in an ecosystem that provided them the most vulnerable people in the world as playthings. And other countries are doing things, whether I should say they're enough or not, I'll leave that up for those people and their countries to decide that for their governments, even if those things are performative, there is action being taken. The United States has done zero. The United States actually had the capability and had in their hands, because we had the files, right? We had the files. We create we assisted in the creation of this monster who was doing these things globally on a global scale. Uh so it should have been our responsibility to release these files, to give this news up, to let other countries handle this. We are not only protecting other predators in other countries, but not giving the information of the people in their countries who are doing this to people who are protecting predators in this country by not releasing names, by keeping the files hidden, or saying, oh, these this is like the same 2008 excuse. Well, these banks are too big. Bell gotta bell them out. Oh, these people are too integrated. If we release the names of all the people in the files, the system would collapse. This is not a system worth keeping, if that's the case. The banks were not businesses worth staying staying around if they can't manage. Like you have banks who are supposed to manage money, but they can't manage money, so you keep them around. If these people are supposed to govern the people and support the people, but they're doing the most harm to the people, they don't need to be in position of power. It's that simple. It's not a system that we should uh hold. It's not a system that we should aspire to have. The issue that people are running into, and I think this is an issue that people are not recognizing, is there is sadly a large majority, not majority, I don't know the numbers, but there are a large amount of people who don't see a problem with this behavior. There are a large portion of people who defend this kind of behavior because they also are these kind of people. And and that's just something people have to recognize, and that's why I say people need to have these conversations. You need to see who these people are that are in your life, and you need to decide whether you're like, are you gonna educate them or remove them?

Allies and Friendships in Activism

SPEAKER_00 35:26

Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of things that happen socially and politically that's like a moment where you have to assess the people that are in your life. It's almost like a roundtable event. I remember when the George Floyd situation happened, there's people that I was partying with, hanging out with, people I thought we were close, like buddy buddy, eye to eye. And the way they reacted to that situation and how I knew them was totally opposite. And I realized that some people are your friend, but they aren't your ally. So it's a big difference in that. And especially when we talk race in America, like you it I honestly I don't think you should have uh just a friend if you have a friend outside of your race. Like it they have to be an ally too, because it's very dangerous to have just friends when it's it when situations get to that. And I I think that's a real assessment of what you gotta deal with and what you have on your hands.

SPEAKER_01 36:29

Yeah, uh friends are supposed to be people you can depend on. And that doesn't mean to say that people in your race are gonna be there for you, because not everybody's skin folk is kin folk, but it's a different, right? Because a lot of people are friends of convenience, friends of circumstance, and when the circumstance gets tough, and it means putting themselves in a disadvantaged position to stand by you. A lot of them will not. And that goes beyond just race, but that's the biggest disadvantage to us, to black people, is their race, right? Everyone has disadvantaged in life. Not everyone's disadvantaged based off the color of their skin. The most visible thing, you look at a person. And so it's even more important that we make sure that the people who are friends are our allies and are willing to stand there when things get rough, willing to talk positive about us in rooms that we are not in, willing to defend us in rooms that we are not in, and not just when they're next to us, and not just waiting to see our reaction when things are brought up to us when they're there.

U.S. Military Actions in Iran

SPEAKER_00 37:29

The things the world is stirring. America has attacked Iran in a joint attack with Israel. So far, their leader has been killed. That's the information I have as of today. We have snatched leaders from their country, and now we have killed a leader in their country. It's uh, I don't know how people can be oh I well, there's so many things going on, right? There is evil being done. The guy wasn't like a nice guy, right? So it's not like I'm missing these people and these but the the situation is these guys get put in power, and that power vacuum was created by us. So it's it's such a convoluted issue. It's it's the endless sore spot in American history. We just keep going back and doing worse every time.

SPEAKER_01 38:23

Yeah. I'll say this the Iran situation is very nuanced, and I'm talking both there's multiple facets of it. There are people internationally, the Iranian diaspora, who support regime change through the U.S. and don't support regime change. There are people locally in the country who support regime change through the U.S. and don't. It's easy for me to sit in the comfort of my home in America and dictate how people should feel about the U.S. intervening. I can't say we are responsible, like lacking responsibility, it's our tax dollars that are getting put towards that. And that's how a lot of people see it, right? A lot of people look at U.S. citizens, you are the cause. I'll be the first to say, I don't ask my tax dollars to be sent sending missiles. We have homeless people in our major cities that could use the millions of dollars we spent on abroads. What I will say is as someone who studies history, we've seen what this looks like. Yes, Ayatollah was a bad person who's committed multiple atrocities. He is someone who was able to take power due to the U.S., though, after the U.S. got rid of an elected leader 50s to 70 years ago, I believe it was, who wasn't as well, they didn't like. And it's a common thing, right? There's a country, they want things from there's a leader there, not necessarily for us. We get rid of them, we do a regime change. Uh it's not up for us to do regime changes in countries. I feel for the people who just want to breathe. And even if tomorrow looks bad, they've already been suffering for so long that if they get to breathe for a day, they will take that. And I understand that. I'm also not naive to the situation of what it looks like when the U.S. just hap-hazardly goes into a country. I have had the unfortunate or fortunate situation where I've gotten to speak to someone whose family got blown up by an airstrike in Afghanistan and just got labeled another number as civilian casualties because that's how the U.S. likes to play these things off. So I am not unaware of why people would not want the U.S. to just come haphazardly come and do a regime change. But I'm also very aware of what it looks like when you just want someone different to not keep abusing you. Right. So it's very nuanced. I continuously do research and look and see the opinions of uh Iranians and how they feel about the situation and how the situation is continuing to escalate. We've already actually blown up a school of young girls, and so now there's about 109 young girls who died due to a US bombing. And these are the real effects of us getting involved through force to push a regime change. We have spurred, not we, Trump has spurred on local citizens to protest. Uh they did it before. We did not show up for them. Thousands of them got killed. And now that we are there, he's spurring them on to do it again to create inside dissent in Iran. Israel has had a religious prayer app in the country and has been sending push notifications to military officers and other citizens in Iran to revolt and to lay down their arms. And so what you're seeing is an evolution of warfare to countries who are opposed to any Western ideologies and any Western resource sharing. And Trump himself is basically used Venezuela and Iran to show the rest of the world that he is willing and he has capabilities. And he has four years. Well, he only it's been a year, so he has three years left, right? And he's made it very clear that in his time, while he is here, that he is going to have it his way. There is no other option. And I believe that this is not just like this is not just a threat to uh non-Western Allied powers who, you know, even if you're in Europe and you're like, well, you know, they're against the West, whatever. This is not just a threat to Iran. This is a threat to any country who deems it that they do not have to play ball with Trump and with America. People can choose to ignore the signs, and y'all can keep saying, well, it will never happen to us. And time and time again, we will keep having these conversations. But yeah, I'll keep paying attention to the situation in Iran. The world will be affected by these things. The strait that Iran controls, which has 20% of the world's oil traveled through it every single day, has now been shut off. So we will see a financial impact coming soon. Now, how much of that it'll impact it, we don't know, but there will be an impact. And this is just the start. After this, uh potential regional instability in the region of the Middle East because Iran is going to start attacking other countries. They have started attacking other Middle Eastern countries that are allied with America. And so now we're just going to see an increasing greater loss in life due to the way that this situation was handled. I think those are the opinions about whether this was the right way or the wrong way. There are real statistical negative impacts.

SPEAKER_00 43:58

Yeah, this isn't going to be pretty for anybody. Involved, all parties involved, especially the people of Iran. And we have lost soldiers already. We're gonna lose more. This is not a joke or a game. And the people who are moving around and masquerading and leveling this level of aggression and power aren't actually in harm's way at all. And I hope the soldiers on the ground on all sides start to understand what they're fighting for and who they're fighting for. I think media literacy and masculinity has been catered to certain things to create these young men. Because it's very, I mean, we both come from bad neighborhoods, right? That's the that's a that's already, here you go, where you want to be, where you want to go, where you want to do. And now we have a bunch of kids who a lot of people choose the military because I'm just thinking about the person behind. These people are gonna go die and go fight each other. And their leaders are taking zero risks and they're putting them at risk. And I think the American people should know that.

SPEAKER_01 45:14

Yeah, I mean, Trump did. Trump did his speech.

SPEAKER_00 45:19

We lost soldiers.

SPEAKER_01 45:20

Did you listen to Trump's speech?

SPEAKER_00 45:22

I bro, come on now. I uh Trump did he did a seven-minute speech.

SPEAKER_01 45:29

Yeah, he did he did a seven-minute speech to his announcement. Well, this is after he already attacked. Oh, okay. And it's also so like this is the reason I brought up like Ramadan earlier too, right? Because you have these Muslim calls, these people are fasting, right? This is like a religious, spiritual event for them that goes for months, right? So he's attacking a country uh that is physically weakened at that due to this. But he said, you know, it's basically like that and people thought the Shrek ming, but it's like real, right? He's like a basically some of our soldiers are gonna die, and that's the risk I'm willing to take coming from a draft dodger. Crazy. You got young people dying for an old man's war coming from a draft dodger. Like if you are a veteran or you're a military person and you believe that like fighting war is like the American way, you're going to die for a draft dodger.

SPEAKER_00 46:18

I mean, that's why the veterans have been so outspoken about this presidency and this run. I've never seen this amount of veterans be beaten in the streets before. You know, this is the crazy thing. Like, there's a lot of ICE agents that have put hands and feet on veterans. They've arrested veterans on their way to work. Like people with purple hearts and shit, bro. It's insane. And, you know, that's the thing when you conflate nationalism with real pride.

unknown 46:46

Right.

SPEAKER_00 46:47

Just in closing, I think the country is going into darker waters. These next couple of years are gonna be tough for everybody, America and globally. Now, we are all pivoting and advancing at the same time with AI and all these things happening. So, like, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. There's gonna be innovation, there's gonna be tech, there's gonna be strides forward, but the leadership is the leadership at this moment, and that's the life of Tom's. Yeah. All right. Thank y'all for tapping in. It's Lane LA.