EP 21 How To Enjoy The Collapse Of US Imperialism (Audio Feed)

It's finally here! The solution to all our problems.
Just kidding. Everything is a mess, but don't despair, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and we will walk beside you into the bright new day! Sorry for the crappy audio. Quality will improve next episode.

Fatima's GoFundMe: https://tinyurl.com/Fatimasgofundme
Gaza Flour Fund: https://chuffed.org/project/141171-gaza-flour-fund

Takeaways
- Connected Struggles
- Imperial Aggression
- Humanitarian Aid Vaccine Safety
- Misinformation Impact Imperialism and its Impact
- The Need for Solidarity

Chapters
- 00:00 Introduction and Greetings
- 05:18 Impact of Imperial Interventions
- 11:06 US Imperial Interventions and Resource Wars
- 18:17 Struggles and Bandwidth
- 24:10 Class Struggle and Limitations
- 30:15 Medical Issues and COVID-19 Vaccines
- 55:03 Imperialism and Its Impact
- 01:14:21 The Call for Solidarity

Catch up with us at ComradeUnclePod.com
Audio versions available on all major directories, or on our website.
Video available on YouTube

Transcript

0:18

All right, welcome back. I'm here with the illustrious, the ingenious, the man of many ways, Polymichanos, comrade, uncle, Abraham, Joseph, um the lion of Lebanon. ah Wait a minute, I think the lion of Lebanon might have been somebody else. Alright, so uh the line of Lebanon the uh intensive care unit physician who's worked in a bunch of places in the world, who volunteered for the US Military Medical Corps three times and has done a bunch of other. of Williston. ah The... uh Yeah, yeah. All right. That's not bad. Not terrible epithets. You know, mean, it's... Yeah, it couldn't be... uh No question about that. historical. So welcome back. I'm Odysseas. This is my uncle Joe and uh comrades both. We are here to talk to you once again about some stuff. um I think we wanna cover a few different things. There's some medical news from inside the US and relating to outside of course, and then. You know, we've got some shenanigans going on. US imperial aggression in Venezuela and of course, you know, the stuff going on in Palestine continuing to go on despite the fake ceasefire and whatnot and, you know, plans for aggression with all these countries. In fact, I was looking at a list of the top oil producing or oil reserves in the world. And it was like, know, Venezuela, uh know, puppet state, Saudi Arabia, or, you know, client kingdom, Saudi Arabia. And literally every, on the top 10, either they're countries that we have done a coup in, invaded, destroyed, or is belly up, you know, a complete client state of the US. It is like, except for, I guess Canada, but again, client state. Anyway, we'll get to that later. it's important to point that out. think Venezuela is got the number one reserves, proven reserves, uh heavy crude, there's apparently a little difficult to uh utilize, but it's doable. But the number one reserves in the world. I think the thing we can talk about this in detail later, but I think that needs to be that our listeners need to be reminded of that we need to be reminded of over and over and over again is that You know, the talk before Trump invaded, sorry, he didn't invade, before Trump kidnapped Maduro, the talk was, well, it's the Sol de, what is it, I forget, Cartel de Sol, was the crime family that, or gang that Maduro was responsible for, which of course, was absurd. Number one, it did exist. That animal did exist, at least in words. But it was when the CIA was traveling drugs during Iran-Contra and after. I mean, it is a U.S. animal. know, and there's no, I don't think we need to be sanguine about the weaknesses and strengths of Maduro. I mean, it's as clear to me as can be is that prior to Chavez, that country had some of the worst income inequality, social inequality that you can imagine. And that that movement, Bolivian, Bolivarian Revolution, yeah, thank you, I'm having a little trouble with English today. Bolivarian Revolution did a great deal to eliminate that, to mitigate that. And that after 2000, I think it was about 2012, the sanctions kicked in and things began to slowly fall apart. I think from what I've been able to read, there is some level of incompetence in the Maduro government. But none of that, none of that has, I mean, those are issues for the Venezuelans to handle. None of this means that we ought to be doing anything that we've done. And the reason I raise this issue is that I've seen people write, uh well, know, Maduro and his government have killed so many people. I mean, what's important to recognize is that the the Imperial interventions from at least, and you could go before, but from at least 1947, when the National Security Act 1947 was signed and put into place, to present, the number of deaths range in the tens of millions that we are responsible for. Not you and I, but we are Americans. It is our country. It is our government. We're talking tens of millions of dead people and multiples of that damaged by our interventions. And of course, the wording is always, well, we're doing this for democracy. But you know, it's never, of course, democracy. It's always about resources. more lately, it's oil. And sometimes, to obviate a good example, that example of our Cuban brothers and sisters is one. mean, again, one does not have to ignore faux pas that the Cubans have perpetrated on themselves. mean, mistakes are made, they always are. But what we've done has destroyed that country. so I think it really is important that while we, as people of the left, as socialists, uh whatever you want to call left anarchists, whatever the heck it is we call ourselves, want to have a Marxist, want to have a decent life for people no matter what country they live in. Yes. to point out the flaws in our when our comrades make them and to try and correct them, but also to point out that the damage done has been done primarily by the empire, by us. And and that really makes a difference, I think, when you're trying to think through this whole issue of Maduro. mean, the guy is the president of Venezuela. He was elected. Far as I can tell from reading the the poll watchers. mean, yes, there was some controversy, but it appears that even the last election, the guy won. He didn't win by 99 % to 1%. But he won. It was close, but he won. we have done our best to destroy that country economically and socially. And you see the consequences. You see the consequences of that in Iran today as well. You see the consequences of that. saw in Syria. I mean, it's over and over and over and over and over. The way that the United States has its hand in—and I don't mean this just in a conspiratorial way, but the way the United States organized the world trading system after World War II gave it the power to really manipulate anything, anytime. Using the SWIFT system—the SWIFT is an acronym. SWIFT is based in Belgium, but it's It's really a US organization, but that's the organization that anytime you do any banking, basically it goes through SWIFT, online banking, for example. That system has made it impossible for Cubans, for Venezuelans, and so forth, for Iranians to do business with anybody. And it's only now, and I believe you mentioned to me the new system, our bricks are yeah, CIPs, the Cross Bank Inter, ah sorry, Cross Border Interbank Payment System. ah That's a mouthful. um There's apparently some other, M-Bridge, yeah. recently come online. my understanding is very recently, I mean like in the last week that Brazil did some large deal uh with China and it completely bypassed New York, which is the first time essentially ever. Currency swap. Yeah, I guess uh and so this, I this is those are the kind of changes that are needed to obviate the sanctions, by the way, sanctions that the United States has placed on countries throughout the world. And I just want to say, I know we're not, we're not trying to get into this too deeply, but there are, there, there is a legal basis for the placement of sanctions that came about. uh after World War II with the formation of the United Nations and sanctions can be placed on a country when the UN says this should be done. Unilateral sanctions are illegal. And what we've done, Cuba uh and this sort of commas and a whole bunch of other countries, they've been unilateral sanctions. And we've used our position of authority and power. Our government has used its position of authority and power to... penalize countries whose governments we don't like, whose leaders we don't like, whose people we don't like. And uh this may be slowly coming to an end. And I certainly hope it is. uh Because people of Cuba, the people of Nicaragua, the people of Venezuela, the people of Iran don't deserve this. I mean, they deserve all of them, governments of the people, by the people, and for the people, not of the US, by the US, and for the US. Right, yeah. Now, if you go down the list of the top oil producing countries, ah they are all either client states of the US uh or we have done a coup or destroyed them or uh proxy war, Russia proxy war, Venezuela abducted the president, tried to do multiple coups, ah Iran, I mean, you see what we do to Iran. uh Let's see, what was the other one? ah Well, at any rate, you get the idea. Libya, don't forget Libya. destroyed Libya and Iraq ah invaded. ah So it's no coincidence. There's a material basis, speaking of Marxism. There's a material analysis of what's going on. as you said, uh a war for resources, a constant churn uh of... destroying, tearing up, and extracting uh value, surplus value, ah extracting resources, extracting everything that the oligarchs in the US can get ah from the third world. is true. I think, I quite hesitate to say this, there are, and I think this is an important point at this point in history. There are critiques, and we touched on this a moment ago, there are critiques we could make of any leader of any country, even countries that we look up to, right? I mean, I'm not interested in heroes. mean, none of us should be. Heroes are single mothers raising their kids. Heroes are teachers. you know, leaders, no, we're not heroes. mean, we just, leaders of countries that we have respect for, leaders we have respect for, I think we should not hesitate to critique when critiques need to be made. But it is important at this point in history to decide what sides you're on. I've got plenty of critique. I mean, plenty of criticism of Vladimir Putin. I first of all, I'm not a Catholic. I'm not an Orthodox. I'm not religious. You know, those guys are anti-gay. mean, but you know, they do support Iran and they do support the Palestinians. They are fighting NATO. I'm sorry. I cannot in good conscience say I oppose the Russian Federation. The same is true. mean, there are issues with Iran. I mean, but they are the guys who support Hezbollah. They're the guys who support Palestinians, I think one has to decide with imperfections, there are imperfections, which side you're on. And now is the time because I see things only getting worse from here on out, not better. and you know, I'm sorry, ahead. Please continue. I likely won't live to see it. You will. And I I think we're closer to World War III than we have ever been. And it is utterly frightening. I mean, look at... We've... Don't count those chickens with a hatch, never mind. We've been absolutely critical about the Israeli forces. behavior in for the Palestinians. is fascistic behavior. It's genocidal behavior. And now we find that our own, our own, they're not mine, they're not yours, our own Department of Homeland Security ICE agents, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they have an office in Tel Aviv. They are trained, at least some of them, by the Israeli occupation forces. In some hundred of the, I've forgotten how many, I want to say 20,000. That may, I may be overstating it. I can't remember, but I think that's about right. the number of agents, some 120, 150, are former IDF soldiers. I mean, when you're bullets in children's heads and adolescents' genitalia and in children's chests, what's the big jump to put three bullets in a woman's face who's trying to get away, who says, I'm not mad at you, as she drives away and murdering her? I mean, we are in extreme danger now. Yeah. For future reference, let's uh say, in case somebody's listening to this in the future and doesn't know about it, uh recently, um ICE is the American, um they're literally brown shirts, ah but they are the American sort of, uh how would you describe it? Immigration, sorry. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, and they've kind of been used uh not solely by Republicans, not solely by Trump, by succeeding since, oh, I don't know, Obama, I think, about that era, but by succeeding uh administrations to kind of terrorize in ever increasing, you know, levels of horror with ever increasing levels of violence and repression and sort of uh violation of due process uh until we find ourselves today. know, mean, Biden was worse than Trump one. Trump two is worse than Biden. You know, so the ratchet moves continually until we find ourselves uh today. And in this day where, you know, they just recently shot this woman in the face who was, you know, I mean, look, she was not doing anything, she didn't deserve to die. don't know, mean, she like, what, pulled her car in the wrong thing or something. I mean, she was trying to leave. There's this whole narrative of she was attacking them with her car. That is not true. If you watch the video, she wasn't attacking anybody. She was trying to leave. She made the fatal error of uh telling them that people didn't want them there or something. I mean, it wasn't even like, it's not. You know, that she did um should have sentenced her to death. Frankly, I'd have a hard time seeing any court upholding, arresting her for that matter. um If you watch the whole video, if you don't see weird little cherry picked clips of it, it is quite obvious. I have to say, for what it's worth, I mean, since we're saying stuff, uh You know, I think a big part of the outrage from our white American comrades, uh or not so comrades, depending on who we're talking about, uh I always feel a little bit weird about it because it's like, know, this is a white lady. And I think that there's sometimes a little bit greater of an outrage when it happens to somebody. who is white as opposed to the two Venezuelans who were killed by ICE recently. So setting that aside, however, I think they, yeah. was killed on New Year's Eve by an off-duty ICE agent. No, you have a point. There is, I mean, it's. That doesn't diminish it, and they can see themselves in it, and that is legitimate. But you know what I'm saying. to be, I know exactly what you mean, there does appear to be a hierarchy of value to life. It's not mine, it's not yours, but it seems to exist. And when a blonde haired, blue eyed Israeli kid gets killed, it's somehow different than when a hundred Palestinian kids who look like me and you get killed. And again, it's not to diminish Nicole Goode, it's not to diminish her. First of all, from what I understand, She was dropping her kid off full stop. She wasn't anything other than that. And her last words to these thugs was, dude, it's OK. I'm not mad at you. And then she turned to drive away. And then this guy shot her three times in the face. And then when a physician, three times in the face, when a physician tried to come to her aid, he was threatened and told not to come any closer. They let her sit. I mean, she was probably dead anyway, but they let her. remind you of? The letter bleed out. this is Israeli behavior. This is fascist Israeli behavior. I'm telling you. if you, I mean, I do not take any joy. It brings me no joy to say any of that. mean, I. are people who I have loved for years who live in that in Israel, and um it me no joy at all. But facts are facts, and it is the same kind of behavior. And you know what Chalmers, I don't, you may not remember, Chalmers Johnson was a professor of history at UC San Diego when I was there. And he wrote the American Empire trilogy. And one of the three volumes is called, Blowback. And he argued that what we do overseas will eventually come back. He's not the only one who's made this argument, but it will eventually come back to, and we'll do it here to our own people. And we have, and we are doing so. It's not we have become, it's not just Trump. I we are a militarized society. I mean, this is utterly frightening. And there are so many layers of this. mean, the discussion we're going to have on the medical issues on vaccines, I mean, are all related to this uh manner of manipulating society to sort of to sow chaos. And that, frankly, is, think, what this is about. We argue that much of what we've done, our country's done, is to take resources and to take power and to take control. And to some extent, I it is true. But I think the biggest part of it is to simply sow chaos. Because where there's chaos, it's much easier to move in and out and around, and then take the very resources that the ruling classes want to take. I don't think we need to have a firm, solid, rock-solid, right-wing government in somewhere. I don't think that's the issue. I think chaos is the issue. Syria, Iraq, name it. You know, that's the issue. destabilization, yeah, no, it's true, it's true. You mentioned that word class. What does that ring a bell? Class struggle. uh You know, it is. But it is. It is um the kind of constant dialectical struggle between the ruling class and everybody else. And something's got to give. It is. uh I don't know who said it, can't remember. But I really like this um paraphrasing here, but the horrors of... and they said it specifically about climate change, in general, the horrors that you see in the world ah will appear to you as a series of videos on your phone camera, you know, on your phone that you see taken with people's cameras, they get closer and closer to you until you're the one holding the camera and then you're the one on the video. So it's, you know, that is why we stress this is the struggles are all connected. You know, what happens to Venezuela will happen to us. What happens to the Palestinians will will be turned on us as we see right before us. um This is uh what's happening already. So these struggles are connected. can't just wall yourself off. I think that one of the major points that we have made and continue to make is that it is not like, oh, well, I'll just support uh or tacitly support or accept genocide over in Palestine because I want to protect, you know, immigrants here. Well, that's just not how it works. A, because it didn't work. You know, that is not, know, Harris didn't get elected, for example. ah And, you know, that's not how, I don't think she even wanted to. I don't think they wanted her to. I think this is exactly what they want. But that's another story. uh My point is basically that you cannot protect any class here without also really consigning them to the same fate. Because what you accept at the periphery, what you allow a state to do, it does come home. That is their testing ground. That's where they refine the processes that you will eventually have used against you or the people that you love. Nobody is ever really free. um from it and uh you know, look, I made this point to somebody the other day um who I was kinda arguing about uh these sorta, know, hierarchies of importance. Who is important, how we protect the, know, well we have to sacrifice the one group so that the other group ah is better off. Now, I mean, would the Nazis have been okay if they had not persecuted Jews and just persecuted everybody else? No. they would still be Nazis. know, there is no, um you can't bargain with that sort of thing. So anyway, I don't want to get too sidetracked. know, mm. uh making is that this is all of a piece and you really can't separate this out. It is true that none of it, no individual, first of all, couple of things. One, none of us has the bandwidth to do everything about everything, first of all. So you have to pick and choose. That's true and that's unfortunate, but it's true. But this is all of a piece, whether we're talking about the Congo or Sudan or Gaza. It's all of a piece, whether we're talking about the United States of Venezuela or Iran, it's all of a piece. And it needs to be looked at that way. We can't argue for human rights, civil rights for people of the Western world and ignore people elsewhere. You just can't do it. And in fact, one of the things that's most interesting is perhaps way too tangential. But with the Bolshevik revolution, there was all this hue and cry about how these crazy Bolsheviks were trying to export revolution everywhere. And it's not that that was utterly untrue, but what those guys viewed, Lenin, Trotsky, what those guys viewed is, is that it was all of a piece. It was all tied together. They couldn't do it all by themselves. All these struggles were tied together. And we've tended, mean, not you and I, but in general, think we've tended to sort of try to push that aside, but it's being thrown back on our face over and over and over again, as we're seeing today. So this is, there are multiple ongoing struggles. No one's got the bandwidth to do, to pay attention to all of them. No matter what we do, it's not enough. mean, believe me, it's not enough. We talk, we do a podcast, we write, we give money, know, none of it's enough. know, decades ago, Suzanna and I were part of the Nicaraguan revolution. You know, was that enough? I mean, you know, I mean. It's never enough, but you can always do what you can do. one, as in that movie whose name I'm not remembering right now, where the guy says, you're just a drop of water in the ocean. You can't do anything. And the retort is, yes, but the ocean is made up of many drops of water. That's what we are. Sorry, the movie is Cloud Atlas. Cloud Atlas, wonderful movie. Great movie. But anyway. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, yes, man. There's, I was just talking to a Quaker friend of mine. I love the Quakers. not the Mennonites, they're not the Amish. They're a different group. Anyway, I was talking to a Quaker friend of mine and he, uh one of their organizing principles, um and it's not an exclusive organizing principles, as many people know, the Quakers are actually quite internationalists, but uh touch what you can reach. So that can mean a lot of things. It can mean helping... your neighbor, can mean helping a stranger, can mean uh speaking out, uh it means doing what you can, um and also understanding your limitations, doing your part. You can do your part, that's all you can do, but that's something. If you can support one, help one family ah in Gaza, that's still a family. I've been helping my friend Fatima. um And I'll post a link if anybody can throw a couple bucks your way. And you know, mean, that's like 20 people, um but you know, I know her kids, they're sweet people. ah And then there's, you know, a million other stories like that. You know, we can't stop a famine ah that is being imposed by, you know, the most powerful country in the world and its little, you know, its little attack dog. um But we can do what we can. Yeah. I agree. Yeah, I again, maybe to put a bow on it. 1933, 1936, this is where we are today. This is the Spanish Civil War of our time, what's going on now. And we have to choose sides. Should we talk about a little bit about the medical issues here? me man, what's going on? is it? Doctor, doctor, doctor, what is the problem? It hurts when I do this. So it hurt my basically my brain hurts these days. So I have been paying attention to RFK Jr. and his minions and they are many. um It is really, really painful. So let's maybe start with the biggest issue, which is the coronavirus COVID-19. There remains a fair amount of chatter and it's what it is chatter, but it's now coming not just from anti-vaxxers in the blogosphere, but from people who are within the house at the CDC, at the NIH, at HHS, that you may not want to get these vaccines. They may not work. So first of all, that's utter bullshit. It's just utter, utter bullshit. The commentary, and this really does, this is pretty much in the blogosphere, that really the only reason people died during COVID is because we, people like me, followed their hospital protocols. I don't quite know what that means, but okay, follow their hospital protocols, used morphine and midazolam and mechanical ventilators, and they kept going up on the doses until the patients died. I mean, it shows, I mean, first of all, it shows an utter ignorance of what medicine is, but that aside, now, there is chatter from within the CDC, from within NIH and HHS, that's questioning the validity and the usefulness of the vaccines. So recently, and by recently I mean like two weeks ago, in the New England Journal of Medicine, and we've got the article, which will be posted, right, on our website, you guys can look at it, ah there was a... uh that'll be there, but there was a review, it's a French series of approximately 30 million people. Of that 30 million, something on the order of 23 million were vaccinated and something on the order of six and a half million, so it's not quite 30, were unvaccinated. And they looked at multiple, multiple variables, including the severity of illness, gender, age. underlying conditions and so forth. The people who were vaccinated, well, that's mortality, but just in terms of doing the study, the people who were vaccinated tended to be more women, tended to be sicker, tended to be a little older. All-cause mortality was significantly less, all-cause, not just COVID, all-cause, significantly less in the, and this was, by the way, mRNA vaccine. That was the one that they looked at. Mm-hmm. tend to be much less than in the unvaccinated people. And it went out for a period of time. It wasn't just one and done. And this was cardiac disease, cancers. It was really remarkable. And again, the thing that's most remarkable is that the patients who were vaccinated tended to be sicker. So you might have expected that they would have done even worse, but they didn't. They did better. So COVID vaccine mean that, know, so if you got the vaccine and, you know, then you were less likely to die of heart disease or, you know, whatever, diabetes or... what's the biologically plausible mechanism for that? And it's not perfectly clear, because remember, this was not a randomized prospective control study. This was a retrospective study looking at multiple databases in the French health system. Legit, but it raises as many questions as it answers, for sure. But it could be, it could be that one of the things that happened was people who were sicker and then were vaccinated, tended to not get sick, sicker in terms of comorbidities, tended to not get sick with COVID and then be compromised and then die of something else. But there's a handful of sort of biologically plausible explanations you could put forward, but that's gonna have to be studied in a prospective manner. I don't think it's the vaccine or the mechanism of the vaccine itself that did it. mRNA vaccines are really remarkable. Mm-hmm. this is slightly tangential, but there were a series of four patients studied at the University of Florida, Shands Hospital with glioblastoma, which is an utterly horrible brain tumor. And they were cancer, yeah. And they were given an mRNA vaccine against the tumor. they got pieces of the tumor, they isolated proteins from the tumor, they made a vaccine against it, and then they injected the vaccine. Well, they injected the... the mRNA for the elements of the tumor and the body and the person, the patient's body made antibody to those proteins and it stopped the cancer. I mean, whether these are like, you know, full cures or just responses, that's not clear. I've not seen the medical presentation yet, but it was reported that this was done. So it is an amazing. an amazing platform on which to make vaccines and not just vaccines against infectious diseases, but potentially vaccines against malignancies, which is a huge deal to take a vaccine. first page of news, doesn't it? RFK Jr. and his minions have completely stopped mRNA research. They've cut off all funds to it. So this is really, I mean, this is really not a good thing at all. I mean, the mRNA platform is truly remarkable. There may be downsides we don't know about, that's all true, but at this point, it is nothing short of almost, almost miraculous what that... platform can do when it's used, when it's used properly. So the French study clearly showed, as clear as any retrospective study can show, that uh vaccinated patients had overall all-cause mortality that was significantly less, had COVID mortality and COVID hospitalization that was significantly less, and had deaths from other causes. Again, biologically plausible mechanisms that I mentioned a minute ago. that were lower than the non-vaccinated as well, even though the patients who were vaccinated were older, not a lot older, but older and sicker in terms of comorbidity. So it is truly remarkable. And this is not obviously the RFK who is, I will say, I will say it to his face with respect, is utterly incompetent, should not be in the job that he's in. He has no right doing what he's doing. uh He has eliminated the possibility of this uh platform going forward, the vaccine platform in our country. And they continue to chatter about vaccines and vaccinations. And we should be Denmark. oh one of the more recent things that they've done is to challenge the utility of meningococcal vaccine. uh Meningococcal meningitis is utterly lethal. And spreads very very rapidly the r0 that is to say that its transmissibility ranges between about 1.5 and 3 so for every Person who's infected they'll infect another one and a half to three people and it progresses Extremely rapidly you can be normal this morning and be dead this afternoon this evening Oh, before we move on, first off, I mean, I have a question to ask for you, but for I wanted to just include it in case people don't get to the website to check it out. The study was, let's see here. I want to make sure that I've got the right study as well. The COVID-19 mRNA vaccination in four year all cause mortality among adults age 18 to 59 years in France. and it looks like it was through the JAMA network. Yeah, don't know. Yeah. A bunch of doctors. A bunch of doctors. Yeah, it's really interesting and it's not even that long. So really, really cool if you want to take a look at it. Now, for us... uh us, know, cretinous uh normies who are, you know, rubbing sticks together or whatever. What's meningitis? um Like, kind of give like a uh 30, 10 second rundown or something of, uh is an inflammation of the lining of the brain, the meninges of the brain. It could be autoimmune, it's not usually. It could be viral, it's not usually. It could be, and most commonly is bacterial. And of the bacteria, there's multiple bacterial causes. Meningococcal, Neisseria meningitidis is what causes meningococcal meningitis, is a easily transmissible organism. um And once it gets into your central nervous system, it progresses extremely rapidly. It can present uh as meningitis, know, headache, lethargy, feeling bad, your neck is stiff, you have a high fever. It can present as meningococcal septicemia, which is utterly frightening. I don't think I've ever actually, I've cared for multiple meningitic patients who have meningococcal meningitis. I don't think I've ever cared for one with. with meningococcal septicemia, but that is so severe. And you can find photos in the literature. It is so severe, patients become so hypotensive, that is to say their blood pressure disappears. They get put on drugs to increase their blood pressure while you're trying to treat the infection. They can lose, literally lose arms and legs, be left with stumps, arms. is... is systemic infection as opposed to localized. It is a nasty, nasty bug. Treatable, utterly treatable, but preventable is the key. And the meningococcal vaccine, which we give to kids and it simply prevents the infection. just prevents the infection. I believe it used to be done when uh people went to colleges, I believe it's now done when kids are little. And so it's, what they've done is what RFK and Jr and his people have done is they're well, it's now just a discussion between the provider, the clinician and the parent. But the issue is, is they've made such a stink about it. People are utterly afraid. It is dangerous to not to. to not have that immunization. Like it's dangerous to not get the hepatitis B immunization, right? That's done when kids are first born. And the pundits, including RFK and his people say, well, come on. mean, that disease is only transmitted by using IV drugs and by hookers. what they do, except that's not true. First of all, a mom could have hepatitis B and be asymptomatic. Well, you can say, well, then let's test all the moms. Okay, well, but some moms don't get tested and some... tests are false negatives because they test too early. So the way we went from three cases per 100,000 to 0.1 case per 100,000 was by vaccinating all kids, all babies once they're born. And that's the right thing to do. The other thing, of course, is that the uh blood that contains the virus can remain for hours to a couple of days active on a table, on a surface. So you don't have to be doing drugs to be or having sex to get this disorder. And the earlier you get it, the more severe it is. And severe, means really severe. It's chronic hepatitis. It's cirrhosis, cirrhotic liver. That's to say a scarred liver that doesn't work. It's liver cancer. It's a big deal. And these guys have muddied the water so much that people are generally afraid to move. I'm sorry. Sorry. What? Surgeons and adrenly catch. Well, mean, right. mean, the way it can be transmitted with blood and blood products and body fluids and sex. But also if you're doing medicine, you get a needle poke. I HIV is a thing you worry about, but hepatitis B is a thing you worry about too. um But I'm less worried about us because physicians and nurses will generally be immunized than I am about uh little kids not getting immunized because of this crazy talk that's... Right. RFK. And the guy is the head of HHS. This is really almost criminal. He is a know-nothing. He is a fool. And he is making recommendations. And the people around him are making recommendations that have consequences that are just really dire for our population, potentially for our population. now what I know the answer to this, but let me ask you, what is the big deal? uh OK, so he's saying some stuff and calling things into question. uh Why can't it just be a discussion between a clinician and their people? ah You know, why what could possibly be the problem with having a bunch of. Let's call it what it is, with a bunch of misinformation being uh on a government website. uh No, mean, but that's exactly, I mean, you've answered your own question. I know, I know, I know. But there is, so first things first. The vaccines that exist across the board, whether it's polio or meningococcal or hepatitis have all been tested against placebo. Mm-hmm. And in some cases, the placebo was there was nothing to treat so that there's a vaccinated and a non-vaccinated population. And you see the difference, number one. So they've all been taste it, multiply tested for safety. Number two, there are side effects to absolutely anything that we do in medicine. Anything from the antibiotics that I prescribe to the IV fluids that we use to mechanical ventilation that I use to vaccines. There are, they're rare. And it's all a matter of uh risk benefit. When the risks outweigh the benefits, you don't use the therapy. You just don't do it. When the benefits outweigh the risks and dramatically outweigh the risk, you do use the therapy. But there are side effects. And there's also an issue, because I know the whole issue of aluminum and thymusol and mercury has come up over and over. There is this thing called dose effect. So if I want to kill you, Mm-hmm. of the ways I could do that would be by having you drink a lot of water. Now you say, a minute, water's not poison. How can that be? Water, when you take too much of it, can be poison, decreases your sodium, serum sodium, the sodium in your blood, causes seizures, causes brain swelling, and you die. So it's all, and not that I would ever want to do such a thing to you, of course, but it's true about water, it's true about salt, it's true about aluminum, it's true about all of these agents. Mm-hmm. So what R.F.K. Jr. and his minions do is they cherry pick toxicity or toxicology data and they try and expand it to everything. When in fact the doses are so low that it's just a non-issue. So the aluminum you can get in a vaccine is just a non-issue. It's just not. So what that would look like for water is like um them releasing uh statements on their website saying the RFK and his guys or whatever saying uh something like, uh H2O has been found to cause death in children. uh you know ages whatever you know and and and it can lead to a terrible condition of you know whatever you know illness and even death without all But in any event, um only point is that there's a dose effect to anything, including water, that the drugs have been tested for safety as well as efficacy. how effective are they? That there's no such thing as 100 % effective. Even in that study, the French study, patients who were, people who were vaccinated, some of them, a very small number and less than the unvaccinated of course, did get COVID, but it was way less severe, way less severe. but um But they but they work they're safe they've been tested and Why not have just a little bit more discussion about them? I mean if there was rational discussion probably a reasonable thing, but this is not rational discussion it's really it's fear-mongering and it makes you know and and And in the context of a health system that we have in the United States, which is essentially a for-profit system where big pharma really does get protection against lawsuits for vaccine problems and so forth, it's not too difficult to understand why people who read the potential complications would get scared. And then RFK and his people just make it worse. There are potential issues. There is no question. They're exquisitely rare, way more, much, much, much more rarer than the diseases themselves that the vaccines prevent. But the truth is, really have an issue with this, it's worth saying or mentioning, or clarifying or something, don't know, whatever, reinforcing the point. That means that if you, let's say, get a COVID vaccine, there's a small chance maybe one in a million people or something, whatever, might get sick from that. is way less, you're way less likely to be hurt by that than you are to be hurt by COVID. And so the good of it uh outweighs the potential risks. It's kind of like wearing a seatbelt in a car. you um wear your seatbelt, I guess there's a chance that your seatbelt could hurt you. But we know because we've done studies and because, ah you know. I mean, anecdote, whatever, ah but because we have good evidence. Yeah, they have, right. And uh we know that you're way less likely to get hurt. getting your vaccinations is kind of like that. That can be good way to explain it um when people are worried about it. And Uncle Joe, for the record, because I keep seeing this one pop up, people saying, it wasn't tested. it's not been tested. oh you know, this is, you I'm not taking uh a vaccine that was rushed to the market and hasn't undergone the proper testing. uh Has uh it undergone the proper testing? we, you know, can we safely say that, yeah, I mean, I guess we kind of just. uh went through the 30 million people. mean, yeah. mean, it's pretty big. It's pretty big for a study. mean, it's the vaccines against COVID were developed rapidly. That part's true because there was a pandemic. I mean, there was a pandemic. And the studies for safety are unvaccinated versus vaccinated. And it is true that there are some side effects. I mean, like myocarditis can happen. when you're vaccinated, is, but it happens like a 10 fold higher with the infection itself, higher than that. I mean, there are some side effects, there's no question. And part, I do anticipate or do suspect that part of people's concern is, you know, I get this, I don't have good insurance, I get sick, I'm utterly screwed, I'm just not gonna do it. That's a function, not of the vaccine, but of this utterly backward health system that we have. And we continue to have, I again, I've said this earlier in, previous episodes, but you the last 50 years of my life since I was 21 years old has been arguing for some version of a national health system, whether it's on the French model or the Canadian model or the British model, it doesn't really make any difference to me, but something different than we've got. Our people deserve that. And that would obviate a bunch of these concerns that people have. But we've never done that. What we've done, in fact, if we've done anything, we've moved more toward a private. model of healthcare, is getting more and with faith, what is that big, beautiful bill that Trump and his people passed? There is, there will be more and more costs that are not covered by insurance. It's really quite concerning. Medicaid is cut, Medicare will be cut. Medicaid is cut by, I believe it's $490 billion. Medicare is cut by 90, if I'm not mistaken, billion initially. But if the budget's not balanced and it's not going to be balanced because they will not tax rich people. ah There's a potential for another $500 billion of cuts so that we can do what? Give our military a trillion and a dollars, a $1.5 trillion budget for next year. That's what we want to do. So we can build a new class of battleships so that we can support thuggish nations throughout the world, including Israel. mean, it's not, this is not, This is not helping. I I don't, I refuse to use the term America first, because that comes from the 30s. And that's a Nazi. That was a Nazi line oh from the 1930s, the American Nazi party. But we certainly do need to pay attention to the needs of the people in the United States. And Trump isn't doing it. Obama didn't do it. None of these guys have done it. Biden didn't do it. uh And we need to focus on us uh for sure. Right. It's all connected. Like we were saying, like you were saying, uh know, it's our brutality uh abroad is connected to our suffering at home. mean, that is where that money goes. And that's where it's being cut from. the, you know, the companies that build the bombs, that drop on the people uh who have nothing uh are, you know, the same. companies that profit from this sort of stuff. They're the ones, uh it is a whole system that exists to funnel money from the masses into the pockets of the very few. um it's, like we said, the struggle abroad is connected to the struggle at home. When we send a ton of money to Israel to vaporize Gazan babies and stuff. That's money that doesn't get spent at home. It's this insane medical... Yes. you know, that is a good point, Uncle Joe. That is a good point. um You know, despite all the stuff going on, know, all these distractions from, know, legitimate and not and illegitimate, um there is, you know, the stuff in Gaza. absolutely still happening. is, you know, this plan that was put forward without the buy-in of the Palestinian people is illegitimate. Israel controls half of Gaza. They made, I think it's like a third, and then they made another third, a yellow line that constantly shifts. And they violated the ceasefire with Lebanon, I think, on the order of a couple thousand times. And with Palestine, I think it's up to close to a thousand, if not over, at this point, which means they just are blatantly violating it. And now they're talking about moving to the second thing, the second stage uh of this Trump plan in which he puts himself uh in charge ah of of not the president mind you, but literally himself in charge uh of the creatively uh dubbed Reconstruction. um Peacekeeping. oh I mean, there's multiple things that are concerning, of course, but the United Nations and the secretary general have made themselves utterly useless, utterly pointless. Their existence now is hugely in question, just like the League of Nations was before the beginning of World War II, where the UN and the general secretary could have stood up and said, stop, this is genocide, stop. call out the players, including Israel, including the United States, including the UK, including the EU. He's not done that. In fact, quite the opposite. His people, including al-Banesi, including the judges on the International Criminal Court, International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court, I think, have been sanctioned by the United States. I mean, this is not a small deal. the United Nations Relief and Works Organization has also been, and its workers have been sanctioned. Unruh. I yeah, I the the the I don't know what I don't know what these guys think. mean, we talked a little bit ago about everything, no matter what we do, it's not enough. And you can't have you don't have the bandwidth. But these guys have positions of power. Guterres has a position of power. mean, maybe he'll lose it if he stands up. But who cares? Really? What's the big deal? Why do you have this position if you're not willing to stand up and call what you see, call a whore the whore that it is? And that's not been done. And as a result, the US continues to get away with literally mass murder, as does Israel, mass murder. uh And we can dance around it all we want, but these guys are, they are destroying, whether we agree with them or not, mean, I don't know, some days I'm not sure that I even agree with, but it doesn't matter whether you agree with the post-World War II structural. changes that were supposed to prevent genocide and another war or not. They are actively destroying them now. And this is uh going to be to our woe, to our woe. The United States will not always be the strongest. We will pay for what we're doing. And I must say, along the lines of Clay Feet, I remain, no matter what anybody says, I remain incredibly disappointed that neither China nor the Russian Federation uh vetoed that horrific, it's not even a peace plan, it was a horrific takeover. mean, they could have done it, they didn't do it, they've got a million excuses, I've listened to them all, it doesn't matter. uh too. You know, and I'm I don't know, some people know me. I'm litter. You know, I'm one of the first to defend China. um But however, know, nobody's perfect. People make mistakes. I think that was a mistake. And it's not like they were never OK. Granted. the PA, the Palestinian Authority, told them, this is the way. But the resistance groups, the rest of the Palestinians essentially, or the rest of the political organizations that represent the Palestinians, yeah. Yeah, said to reject it. They are. Yeah. They are meaningless. heard this line that, know, this doesn't, if they had vetoed it, it would have, then the US could have pointed to them and said they're the ones in the way of peace. And maybe that's true, but I don't know. But I just don't think, I don't think this is what Mao would have wanted. ah this is not peace, right? There have been some 450 something on that order of magnitude people killed since the civil war. Ceasefire was signed, Israel bombs every single day. They're not letting the supplies and caravans in so that people can be housed. continue to perpetrate the genocide that they've been perpetrating since October 7th. I wanna make a point, and I guess maybe get some of your feedback on it too, briefly. Something that occurs to me or that could occur to someone is that, oh, Biden was better or worse and Trump is better or worse. I mean, my thought, look, I mean, in objective, numbers, the amount of people being killed ah has gone down. Biden did not push for a ceasefire. It was full speed ahead with him. ah One could say, one could make the argument, it's not an argument that I make, ah that Trump has been better for the Palestinians than Biden was. um Or, I mean, I've heard the reverse, which is absurd, that Biden was better. That's just, you know, it's ridiculous. um But um kind of one of the points, um or that Kamala would have been better is another one. And one of the things that um I think we've highlighted to some degree with uh saying how these are showing um how these plans kind of unfold across administrations. ICE, for example, you know, uh I don't think that there would have been a difference. um I don't think, I think that this is, if Biden had magically uh grown back his brain cells ah and done a third term, I think this is exactly where we would be. I do think that he is a little more psychotic uh than almost anybody else in the world. um But uh the machinery of empire, these interventions, know, messing with, um with Venezuela, uh brinksmanship with Iran and just kind of constantly supporting Israel or whatever. um Yeah, there might be differences and there are, um but those differences are like, you know, pressing a switch that changes the color of the curtains or the arrangement of the chairs on a train that is barreling full speed ahead. ah It's on rails. The empire is on rails. It um doesn't mean that there isn't some small difference between people, but that difference is kind of the point. ah It's there to give you the illusion that you can have an effect because it's so much harder to accept the reality that capitalism is behind. the the misery in the suffering in the world that that it's it's not just uh... that's a systemic problem there's no easy fix that you can't just vote for a democrat for president every four years and get a pat on the head and get told good boy and you fixed everything that's i've talked to a lot of democrats and i've kind of you know argued them into the position of admitting yeah okay biden was bad uh... yeah okay Kamala said this, but what do you want me to do is always, we come to this point where they're like, well, what is your suggestion? What do you want me to do? um And that's a hard question to answer um because the fact is there is no easy solution to this sort of stuff. There is no, well, you just press this button and everything's solved. um Unfortunately, that is not the case. That's not how it works. Doesn't mean there isn't things we can do. but it means there's no simple solution. So I don't know. I mean, for what it's worth, um you know, I don't know that I can prescribe a solution. can vote if you want. um Certainly in local elections, it actually really does matter. um But um don't fool yourself into thinking no matter where you are and no matter what the political parties are, if you... have the choice between two capitalist political parties or more capitalist political parties. Don't fool yourself into thinking that that's the solution to the problems and you can go back to not paying attention. We see where that got us. know, inside the US we had Trump won and everybody freaked out about ICE terrorizing people. What happened when Biden got in office? He was supposed to be better. He wasn't. Not with ICE. Nothing changed with ICE. You know, maybe the The mask was a little more on. It was a little more buttoned up of uh a, you know, terrorism. But, you know, here we are. Biden's gone. It's worse. I think there's a couple of things that one can say about that. One is that in my first vote, think was in 1972, I supported George McGovern. But I have supported lesser of two evils my entire life for the 50 year and I'm now 73. that's that. mean, for that 50 years, it's lesser of two evils. It's always been a bunch of two eagles. I I was pretty active in supporting Obama. We, you know, knocked on doors for him. We did a bunch of stuff, but he didn't do very good either. The truth is, is that we have a, we have a, we do have a system that's on rails and it really, does matter who is leading because they can make some changes. mean, it is, you know, when you think about, when you think about how close we are to world war three, there's been a handful of times we've almost entered World War III. Cuban Missile Crisis was one. uh During Reagan's term when they were doing an exercise of an attack on the USSR was a second one. There's probably been others that I'm not remembering now. But it does matter who's in that position because the less, or I should say, the more competent they are, the less flighty they are. the more it matters to us, probably the safer in a certain way, the safer we are. know, I mean, Biden had issues. I didn't agree with him on an awful lot of stuff, which is the genocide. But Trump is, uh I don't know if he's like literally demented. I don't know. I'm not trying to make a medical diagnosis, but this man is sort of colloquially crazy. He's crazy. He's alienated allies, he's alienated enemy. I mean, the guy is out of his mind. He's threatening to take over militarily Greenland. mean, are you out of your fucking mind? I agree with you. I agree with you. But the thing is, like, if you look at the actual policies of how both he, you know, how he operates, I mean, is he fundamentally all that different from from your George W. Bush's? I agree. There is a difference. um And. didn't actually mention George W. Bush. Normally I wouldn't. I thought that George W. Bush was the worst president the United States has ever had in its long history. Now I don't think that's so true. He's the second worst. Maybe the second worst. But there is, we're pretty bad. But no, no, but is there a difference between an Obama and a Trump? I mean, yeah, there is a difference. in terms of thoughtfulness, there's a difference, in terms of the general trajectory of the country, probably not, because Obama used drones to kill people, including American citizens, hand over fist. I he was, I think, king of drones, and he was also the king of deportations. He did it with a smile. He did it with Elan. But no, no, but there is a fundamental... So while one could marvel at Obama's mastery of the English language in the way he would speak and it was pretty it was Listen to things he did were not supportable and I didn't support him even though I had supported his camp The guy is he's a Bulgarian. I mean he is just a Bulgarian is if is the are the is the policy United States fundamentally different well I mean I would I mean whether you like NATO or not to destroy NATO has never been a part of the policy of United States and he is doing it whether you like NATO alliance and our allies to threaten Denmark with military aggression is really not, I think, what normal people would do. And you can go from there. the neo-Nazi rhetoric that comes out of this administration is fundamentally different. Is it a piece? I mean, you could say, well, this is what you get to when you start out Hmm. we've been. Maybe, maybe, I don't know. But I think I do think it's different. mean, again, you know, uh would it be different if Kamala Harris had been president? I mean, things would be somewhat different, but she lost, she lost for at least three major reasons. One, she would not separate herself from Biden's genocide policy. Two, she ran away from Medicare for All. And three, she ran away from Green New Deal. All things that we utterly need. I mean, she was She is, you know, I mean, yes, a black woman. Yes, a woman. Yes, it'd be kind of cool to have to her. mean, but I'm sorry. What matters more is policy, not just skin color and genitalia. I'm sorry. And the policy she was arguing for were not all that different than Biden's and they would be slightly different, I suspect, in the way they were implemented than... I mean, I don't think, for example, a woman like Noam would be the head of uh Department of Homeland Security if Harris was the president. It'd be somebody else. They might still do some of the same stuff, but the utter lawlessness, brown-shirtedness that we're seeing, my suspicion is we wouldn't see that. So there are some differences. General trajectory, no. Yeah, I don't think that there's no, I mean, there has to be some sort of uh difference. Otherwise, people don't have that illusion uh that the trajectory of uh Empire can be changed. um Whereas, you know, I mean, if they were exactly the same, then it doesn't, know, then people don't have that buy-in. They don't get the pat on the head. um What I'm saying is, whether we got there in two election cycles or just one, um where we're going seems somewhat predestined, especially in terms of uh foreign policy, like what we do in regards to oil. um going down that list uh of interventions um and uh proxy wars and the list of top oil reserves, you see just as many Democrat names stamped on things as Republicans. um So it's like even beloved Carter, uh who genuinely did come to some good positions after he was out of office, um And again, same sort of thing. Like there is this idea of kind of pushing these levers. I just don't think that the switch is connected to that much. um That doesn't mean that you shouldn't, I don't know, yeah. Hmm. Yeah. I think it's important to point out predestination is not what we're about. mean, human beings make their own history, not according to their own individual desires, but they do make history. And so we can change. I mean, I don't think we're going to be able to vote our way out of Trump and Trump's policies, but I do think that a general strike, a nationwide Hmm. Hmm. way to tell Trump and the people like him, and there's plenty of people like him, that this is unacceptable, that we will not tolerate this. That's got to be organized. It's, you know, because of the, uh because of the, oh my God, I'm blocking on the name of the bill that was passed in 1947 that uh outlawed general strikes. Because of that law, the Truman veto, it was passed over his veto. ah It's illegal for unions to do secondary strikes and so forth. So what you'd have to do you'd have to you'd have to basically organize this Outside of unions, obviously the unions would help but outside of unions ah But that's that is the only way to this down. It's gonna have to we're gonna have to shut down the US economy Peacefully with a general strike and say we will not tolerate this kind of behavior any longer We don't want a trillion and a half dollars 1.5 trillion. I'm sorry trillion dollar We want a defense budget that's cut by half. We want a defense department, defense department, a department of war, that can pass an audit. We want Medicare for all. We want a system of transport that's safe and rapid. And we want schools. We want our kids to be able to read. We want to know our history. We want to be able to do math. We want to have a country that will still be here in 100 years. And that also means we have to deal with a climate emergency, which these clowns refuse to recognize. at some point, it will no longer be possible to ignore it. at that point, may, will it be too late? I don't know. We have the technology to basically decarbonize ourselves essentially completely. It wouldn't be complete, of course. You'd still need oil for something. But essentially, but we've forwarded unless I'm mistaken, what I read, Ford, who made a really nice electric vehicle, a Ford Mustang, uh has now gotten out of the electric vehicle business. Why? Because Trump and the people like him say, we're gonna just do oil. This is craziness. So you say, what would be the difference? What would be the difference between a Kamala Harris and a uh Trump? Here's the difference. Trump is... pushing the United States faster and faster into insolvency and irrelevancy. you know, well, I'm... for him! I'm sorry. No. Yeah... misery to tens of millions of people. frankly, the same tens of millions of people that the Democratic Party betrayed when they became more Republican than the Republicans, when they forgot their working class roots. you know, none of this brings me any joy at all. We definitely need a working class party, a socialist party, whatever you want to call it party. Mm-hmm. the Greens, I don't um know. But it's not just gonna be, we need a few fine tuning here at home. Our policies abroad have to change. And one of the things that uh disappoints me about Bernie Sanders over and over over again, his utter unwillingness to call the genocide the genocide. to say, this is not about Netanyahu. Netanyahu is a creep. He's a thug, just like Trump is. But this is that country. 87 % of the Israeli population and one of the most recent polls said you should simply ethnically cleanse all of former Palestine of Palestinians. 84%, 47 % said kill them all. Almost half said kill them all. This is from a people who were nearly eliminated by the Nazi Holocaust. So as Ta-Nehisi Coates says, and he's right, Hmm. our oppression will not save us. And he is right on when he says that. So, you know, there's, can pick this up again later, I guess, but things are not bright and all we can do is stick together. Even if we disagree on some issues, which we will, it's okay. The big, on the big issues, you know, again, that's why I'm saying when you see our comrades make a mistake, do something we think is wrong, we have to call it out. not in a destructive way, but call it out in a camaraderie way and try and make it better. But we have to maintain solidarity. We just have to. I mean, we cannot say, well, I'm sorry, you're too white for me. I'm not going to work with you. No, can't do that. You can't say any of that stuff. We are in this together. And if we don't solve it together, I think it was Ben Franklin who said, either we all hang together or we'll all hang separately. You of news, but we will, we'll all be dead. So we do have to work together. And the issues of gender and LGBTQ, these are not minimal issues, these are not minor issues. We have to talk them through, work them through, but we still have to maintain solidarity with one another. We absolutely have to. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And I got to say, mean, you know, for a little spot of hope, I mean, even just on Palestine and to some degree on immigration, you know, I have never seen the kind of, you know, activation and, you know, this sort of widespread, ah you know, the pro-Palestine camp has never been bigger. It's never been bigger. And that is something. I mean, it's not an insignificant thing. I think that for all of the ills that, or for the ills that social media and that sort of stuff has brought us, some things are bad, but there's other things um that are very different and are good. And I think that there's like, There's great opportunity. In great adversity lies great opportunity, right? um And I do think, you know, however disorganized it is, however, um you know, whatever the difficulties that are ahead of us, is, um you know, I'm not one of these guys who's like, the next generation will solve everything, know, Gen Z when they get in power. No, absolutely not. We still have a big, long, hard fight ahead of us, but. But um I think there's reason for hope ah as well. It's not necessarily, you know, the thing that we're seeing is the structure of imperialism crumbling. um These sort of mad grabs at power, while they could, eh you know, result in our total annihilation or close enough to it. um you know, they also signal an end of sorts. mean, you know, I'm sure at some point people in the Spanish empire, whatever, ah thought that nothing would ever change. The British, you know, certainly did, certainly behaved that way. um But uh it did, and things do change, and things will change. And kind of our job is to shepherd things along the way and to try. And for the far leftists of us, I would say that some wise thoughts by a lot of people, and we've kind of alluded to it, but folks from Lenin to uh Mao um to uh Ho Chi Minh and others, um you know. Those guys didn't encourage people to just drop out of everything and like, well, just wait for the revolution and then be ready to, I don't know, pick up a gun or whatever. No, absolutely not. ah It was to um involve yourself uh in the struggle of the people, uh not just at home, but abroad and everywhere. uh there's this line in the excellent book, The Red Earth, by Tran Thu Binh. And he was a Vietnamese revolutionary during the period of struggle against the French colonizers. And one of his guiding things back when there was, I think it was maybe 24 people beginning the very first stages uh of uh what would become the Vietnamese Revolution um was their directive was to go and proletarianize yourself. Go from your places of learning, from your cities, your whatever, and get involved in the struggles of the people. To that point for him at that time in this colonial, uh you know, outpost that meant going and working on a rubber plant, rubber plantation, uh and involving himself there and building the equivalent of labor unions. uh So, you know, oh involve yourself in the struggles around you, touch what you can reach, um you know, right, and take care of yourself too. what you can, recognizing it's not going to be enough, but do what you can. I'm with you. Almost forgot to say thank you for joining us. um Whatever. Get a hold of us. Shoot us a message. I think if you're listening on audio, you should even have this weird thing where you can text us. So if you got any feedback, thoughts, you want to just show us some love, say solidarity from wherever you are. We would love to hear from you. ah ComradeUnclePod.com. ah That is where you can see the studies and whatever the links my uncle will send me, um as well as links to all of our other stuff. So check it out. Like us, give us a five-star rating. Do all that sort of stuff. uh Show us that wonderful, lovely solidarity. um Shout out to our friend uh in Belgium. ah Hope you're doing well. um And much love to all of you guys. Thanks for tuning in. I really enjoy getting some time to talk with my awesome uncle. He's pretty cool, huh? Yeah, so I hope you guys had a good New Year uh and uh Christmas or whatever holiday um you celebrate or uh Solstice or whatever it is. Saturnalia. uh Yo. Yo, Saturnalia. ah You know, um and um don't forget if you can uh throw a couple bucks, I'll put a link as well in the episode description to help my buddy out um in Gaza. Fatima for the people who have donated already is doing, um you know, as well as can be considering uh the families as well. um Kids are still doing okay. uh You know, their tent is, they've had to move their tent a couple times because of the destruction of the infrastructure that, you know, people don't think about stormwater management. As a guy who works in the construction business, know, stormwater management is important. And of course, you know, Israel has destroyed. the stormwater management infrastructure. So when it rains, it floods now. And speaking of ecological disasters, that water is flushed out into the Mediterranean. So in addition to the emissions from all this stupendous amount of ordinance being dropped, um it also creates multiple levels of ecological catastrophe. um Any true, as Greta, Toonberg would tell you any uh supporter of, or if you wanna fight climate change, let me say it the simple way, uh the best way to do that is always, uh always, one of the best ways, one of the integral parts that you cannot ignore is to be against war, ah because war is one of the biggest polluters. ah It destroys the environment as well as destroying people ah who are part of the environment. uh So, you know, there's that. m You know, they're doing good. They're still eating. you know, kids need more than just flour. Unfortunately, the meat and stuff is hard to come by. um But we've kept them going so far. And she sends her eternal gratitude to each and every one of you who have donated so far. um You know, it's not lost on her. When we talk about reaching what you can touch, you can be the difference between somebody, a child eating or not. um So thank you to those of you who have donated to help Fatima. And also thank you to those of you who are helping individuals all over. um You know, that is tremendous. really, you know, it makes a huge difference. I mean, you know, it's the difference between life and death for people. um Another one I could shout out, I think it's, let me just make sure I got the name right. uh Yeah, there we go. Is the the Gaza Flour Fund. They are they're also doing good work doing direct aid. And so that's a that's a you know, if you ever get the the the urge to support the podcast, just send it to those guys. You know, we pay for this out of my pocket because I love hanging out with my uncle and that's like worth everything. know what I mean? But I don't know. If you can help people out, that is awesome and you rock. if you're, all you can do is speak up even better. I mean, not even better, but. Also awesome. You know, we do what we can. Keep doing what you can. We're with you comrade. My comrade, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, cousins, whatever, siblings. You know, we both appreciate you guys and we hope you're doing well. And we hope that 2026 is, you know, better than 2025 was and either way we're going to get through it if we all work together, fight together, we'll win together. So solidarity with all oppressed peoples of the world, free Palestine and uh you know keep on fighting comrade. See you around.