Saifedean Ammous explores the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, emphasizing property rights, international law, and the influence of modern Zionism, urging a reevaluation of policies to achieve a just resolution.
In this episode of TFTC, Saifedean Ammous delves into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, exploring its historical, legal, and ethical dimensions. He begins by discussing the conflict's origins, highlighting the shift in land ownership from 5.6% Jewish ownership in 1945 to approximately 90% today, attributing this to land appropriation and settlement expansion. Ammous criticizes the international community's inadequate response to these property seizures, citing a recent International Court of Justice ruling deeming Israel's settlement policies illegal. He argues that modern Zionism, driven by secular nationalist motives, has been conflated with religious doctrine, justifying Palestinian dispossession and human rights abuses. The discussion also touches on the significant role of the United States, whose support for Israel is influenced by powerful lobbying efforts rather than strategic alliances. Ammous concludes that without significant international intervention or policy shifts, the conflict is likely to escalate, emphasizing the need to address property and human rights issues for a sustainable resolution.
The conversation with Saifedean Ammous offers a profound exploration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, challenging mainstream narratives and highlighting the crucial issues of property rights, international law, and ideological influences. By examining the historical context, legal frameworks, and the roles of various stakeholders, Ammous provides a comprehensive understanding of the conflict's complexity and calls for a reevaluation of prevailing policies to address root causes for a just resolution. His insights emphasize the importance of historical awareness, legal integrity, and ethical considerations, contributing to a more informed discourse and potential pathways to peace.
0:00 - Intro
0:36 - Infringement of Palestinian property rights
7:23 - Israel’s solution is extermination
12:47 - River & Bitkey
14:10 - Religious justification of cruelty
25:51 - Christian Zionism
33:35 - US is a puppet state
53:07 - Can Bitcoin defund the empire?
58:20 - They use every crisis to manipulate
(00:00) his name was scoffield he was a lawyer no religious training and he'd been in jail for forgery and then he decided that he was going to write the Bible it's not the predominant form of Christianity anywhere in the world it's it's pretty startling that people consider themselves Christian and then think that what's going on in Gaza is something that their faith compels them to support I find that absolutely absolutely stunning this rip of tftc was brought to you by River it's the best place to buy
(00:32) Bitcoin go to river.com tftc and enjoy this episode safe I don't know if you can hear it but I can hear one of my boys getting timeout downstairs they're uh very [Music] vaguely ah how you doing sir it's been a while it's been I think over a year I think the last time we spoke was when you were in Austin I think so yeah I think so I'm doing great man it's good to be catching up to you with you and to you always there's a lot going on in the world um I reached out I mean you you've been um
(01:08) very vocal about what's going on in Gaza and actually right before we hopped on the the stream here there was a headline coming out of the international court of justice at the hog has ruled that Israel's settlement policy in the occupied Palestinian territories violates international law and I think that's what's been really interesting about your approach to um this conflict what's going on is really revolving around property rights and the infringement on those property rights of Palestinian citizens and it seems like
(01:45) the court of international Justice is agreeing that these settlement takeovers are are violation of international law yeah I mean I think it's uh it's pretty uh absurd to try and think up of some kind of consistent legal moral uh justification for trying to justify this which is just blatant theft there's no sugarcoating it it's just blatant out in the open theft and um most people are just completely unfamiliar with what's going on in um Palestine and Israel they just go by the headlines that are put in
(02:20) front of them and that of course always focuses on uh what Palestinians do and the reactions that Palestinians have to this stuff but rarely um emphasizes the conditions under which Israeli occupation places Palestinians and when people find out the the initial response I usually get from people is just no this there's no way this is true there's no way what you're saying is true obviously it's not like that obviously Israel can't possibly be this bad and they are sort of in denial about
(02:53) it because they can't really believe that something like this could be going on in the world today this blatantly and nothing is being done about it and when you tell them well yeah that's why some Palestinians do nasty things to respond to that it makes them um quite uncomfortable because they're much people much prefer to stay in the Cocoon of self-righteousness wherein we are good and all of our friends and allies are good and everybody else is just bad and we do good things because we're good and
(03:27) they do bad things because they're bad so obviously everything they do is bad everything we do is good and this is just um administrative stuff you know it's imperfect it's just the government doing government things there are inefficient governments everywhere but uh clearly Israel cannot be doing bad things but no it is I think I always like to start with this fact whenever I'm trying to discuss this conflict that ultimately what it really comes down to is land property rights theft now of course here you might say well land
(04:03) isn't shitcoin land is an outdated thing who cares I'm sympathetic to all these um arguments that people shouldn't be fighting about land but in order to not be fighting about land we need to have property rights in land and so uh the problem is not that we um people attach too much importance to land the problem is if you don't have property rights in land then you're going to have extremely problematic uh outcomes emerge and so what it really comes down to is that um in 1945 the British uh government which
(04:38) was still ruling the land at that point they organized a very thorough census and uh survey of all lands in Palestine and they came up with the estimate of the ownership that belonged to various communities and so this was at a time when Britain was fully committed to Zionism and they wanted to make sure that Israel would be established were trying to get some kind of arrangement going wherein the local population could accept more and more migrants coming from Europe to Palestine in order to establish the country and so they did a
(05:13) survey of the land and 5.6% of the land was owned by Jews and now some of those Jews obviously are Palestinian natives they'd been there for decades and centuries or centuries maybe Millennia in some cases and but they were a very small minority but then most of the rest was migrants so at that point migrants who were Jewish could come and buy land but they only managed to buy about 5.
(05:44) 6% of all of the land So that obviously is going to be a sticking point if you're trying to set up a country that is based on an ethn religious basis wherein it's considered a national Homeland for one group and that group only happens to own 5% of the land in the country obviously a very very tricky thing now today Flash Forward 80 years later and here we are and we have roughly 90% probably of the land of Palestine is owned by the Israeli government not just Israelis but owned by the Israeli government so how could you go from 5% that is owned by
(06:23) all Jews privately as well as the Jewish National Fund and a bunch of other um or organizations that became part of the state how do you go from 5% to 90% roughly theft that's what's been going on and the settlements are just the latest chapter it's just the thing it's this what happened in 1947 it's what happened in 1948 it happened in 1967 it happened throughout 48 to 67 in the areas that are under Israeli control that were under Israeli control at that point so not the West Bank in Gaza and
(06:59) then since 1967 when Israel took over the West Bank in Gaza it's been happening in the West Bank Gaza to a lesser extent there were some settlements there but Gaza was always way too crowded for um there to be uh too much opportunity to take land but in the West Bank at this point more than half of the West Bank is effectively owned by the state of Israel yeah and it's as you mentioned it's been happening over the course of at this point 80 years and it seems like it's been a slow grind towards this and obviously now we have a
(07:35) massive conflict going on over there and as an American looking at what's going on how our government's responding it's just really conflicting because it's um obviously nobody ever likes to see kinetic Warfare being waged um in both directions and you see all these videos of innocent civilians getting getting murdered and that's just what I wonder is like what is the resolution to this conflict obviously it's been going on for a while it seems like it's vitriolic um on both sides and that's somebody
(08:12) again outside looking in like how do you come to a resolution of this in a way that ends the war as quickly as possible um I mean the very sad answer to your question is that I think the answer we're heading toward is mass murder and expulsion of Palestinians until there is no longer conflict this is essentially what Israelis are very openly saying and this is what uh the Minister of Finance who's extremely important and influential in the Israeli government today says Palestinians need to accept that they have three options
(08:49) they can die or they can leave or they can accept living under Israeli sovereignty and control and that's it those are your three other options so um October 7 gave them a great excuse because these people were already in government and they already had these kind of ideas they follow the ideas of um a man called mayor Kahana who was a who was declared a terrorist in the US and in Israel um truly by any definition of the term he was a terrorist and um in his mind it's it's a very simple conflict God gave us this land and anybody who is
(09:32) not part of us should leave or die and um you know smri the Finance Minister follows that line although he does add a tiny little bit of moderation to it in that he says okay maybe some of them can stay if they um accept that they are always going to be living under Israeli Jewish National Rule and that they're not going to be equal citizens to Israelis that's essentially the way that it is going and I think this is um it's an amazing thing because nowhere else in the world do you have this kind of U
(10:09) Brazen criminality anymore in fact I I mean the world is continuously heading toward a more civilized way of dealing through with one another in that um Wars or you know we try and make Wars more contained and you try and um accept the idea that people have natural rights people have rights to own property that are not um not open to just being completely destroyed because they have the wrong religion you see everywhere in the world um people are constantly um becoming more and more accepting of other identities
(10:57) through immigration and through interaction with business or culture or sport or music the whole world is becoming more and more open to each other and to accepting each other and there's one exception in one place in the world where it's just considered that it has to be the case that one group has to have property rights because of their ethn religious identity whereas another group just doesn't and I don't know um I don't know other examples where it is this Stark you can't just buy land if you're
(11:30) Palestinian in Palestine you just cannot do it the Israeli government won't sell you any of the land that it owns it'll take your land and assign it to foreigners who have no connection to the land who just come and claim to be Jewish they get to live in that land and they get to stay in it and you can't buy it back for any price I don't know of other places where this happens where people just lose their land because of their um religion or race or ethnicity and I this is why honestly um I mean
(12:00) before everybody got sick of wokeism and uh identity politics uh when I first came to the US 20 years ago I just could never take any of that seriously in the US because in my mind I just looked at everybody and I just said you know nobody ever took your house because of your identity and so everything else that you're complaining about is really inconsequential nonsense that you probably just need to get over I mean it's really in able to anything else you've never you've never been kicked off of a road or shot at for
(12:34) going on a road or arrested for going on a road where you're not supposed to go just because of your identity and so um that really puts into perspective all of the um all of the identity politics that you see in the west this episode was presented by river river is the best most secure place to buy Bitcoin in the United States go to river.
(12:55) com tftc set up an account today you'll be able to DCA into Bitcoin without paying any fees you'll be able to give people Bitcoin via river links you'll be able to send and receive Bitcoin over the lightning Network and you'll be able to set limit orders if you want to buy Bitcoin at a particular price below or above where it is now you can set orders to buy Bitcoin when it hits that price go to river.
(13:15) com tftc and set up your account today this episode of tftc was also brought to you by bitkey bit key is Bitcoin made easy to use and hard to lose if you're a hardcore bitcoiner out there with friends and family members who have not gotten their Bitcoin off exchanges because they're worried that about the complexity of Hardware wallets seed phrase backups this is why bit key exists bit key is collaborative custody you have a ergonomic Hardware device with biometric confirmation you have the big key app with a key in it and then
(13:43) block holds another key in the server this doesn't come with any seed phrase backups that people have to secure you have social backup it's beautiful solution if you're worried about the people in your life that aren't as advanced as you in terms of Bitcoin hardware and being able to set that up and secure it bit key is a great first step so tell them to get a bit key go to bit keyworld use the code tfc2 checkout they'll get 20% off their first bit key I think really diving into again going
(14:15) like first principles property rights and separating that from like religious um Divine Proclamation that you you own something like how do you how do you separate those two because obviously there are countries in the Middle East um that that are um Theocratic uh monarchies to some extent and so so how do we sort of work through like property rights as an individual taking religion out of it and then um what some deem to be a religious Proclamation a right to land yeah I mean um I think the theology there is uh pretty suspect I
(15:03) think there are a lot of very convincing arguments that modern Zionism modern political Zionism is uh is neither consistent with the Jewish nor the Christian faith and I think the um the the fact that when the Zionist movement was first established it was established by a bunch of secular atheists Eastern European socialists mainly they were the ones who wanted this as a nationalist project and as an internalization of anti-Semitism I think this is something that's highly underrated which is that people like um
(15:36) Theodore Herzel I mean he he was very anti-semitic in in his own uh words he just did not um he did not like being Jewish and he um internalized a lot of the Prejudice that Europeans had towards Jews in terms of the fact that they thought Jews could never assimilate into the west and therefore he thought that the only solution was for them to leave Europe and go to somewhere else and so it wasn't religious he then chose Palestine among several choices Uganda Nebraska Argentina were some of the candidates but he chose
(16:14) Palestine because of the sentimental reasons so it's important here to note that it isn't like this is some um religious movement within Jewish within the Jewish faith that finally materialized in the early 19th centur Century this was 19th century ethn nationalism socialism statism fascism um growing up everywhere in Eastern Europe around that time and um these guys just thought of uh applying it for a people on another piece of land and when Herzel wanted to hold his first Zionist Congress he wanted to hold it in Munich
(16:55) and he was not allowed to hold it in Munich by the Munich Jewish Community there was enormous amount of European rejection of Zionism when it first came out as an idea for a very good reason which is that if you start campaigning for uh Jews in Germany to leave Germany then you're telling uh the non-jews in Germany that Jews don't belong in Germany and that was a big problem for them because a lot of these people I'd say the vast majority of Jews around that period they did not think of themselves as exiled Palestinians in
(17:28) Europe they thought of themselves as Germans or Frenchmen or poles or Russians they were part of these countries and they had been for centuries and so and also I think a very important point they could all move to Palestine there was nothing stopping them from Palestine so from moving to Palestine and yet they did it because it wasn't like they were in Exile the Jews were not allowed to return to Palestine up until the year 637 when it was under Roman control the Romans were the ones who expelled the Jews and prevented them
(17:58) from coming back but then since the Muslim took took over in 637 it was it was possible for Jews to go back to Palestine and to um live and buy property there and they did start going in the 19th century but they hadn't gone before because they don't think of themselves as exiled Palestinians they are German or polish or whatever identity they happen to be from and Judaism was a religion for them not a national movement and so this idea that it is some kind of divine U mandate I find to be um very unconvincing um but
(18:38) even if it were um that of course doesn't uh justify violating other people's property rights this is classic religious fundamentalism that's nonsensical in other words the you know the whole we've spent the last 20 years getting lectured about religious fundamentalism and about how bad religious fundamentalism is and of course the poster chart for that is Islamic terrorism and I think the the essence of the critique is very important in that your religion cannot justify the violation of the property
(19:14) rights of others you can't just say that well because God said this then that person can die and then we just just expect that to be an acceptable part of normal civilized society because anybody can say there God says all kinds of strange things things um and this is when religious fundamentalism really becomes a massive problem and this is essentially what Zionism is it's saying that the rights of Palestinians the property of Palestinians the lives of Palestinians are not something that can be respected and therefore it is okay to
(19:51) violate their property violate their rights without them having to commit any error so you're born Palestinian and it's okay to kill you when you're one day old because you're Palestinian because you're not born Jewish and this land was assigned for by God for Jewish people only this is really the level of religious fundamentalism that is in power in Israel at this point and of course when you um when you um listen to Israel propagandists in the west they emphasize the liberal um more Cosmopolitan face of Israel talk about
(20:29) the Tel Aviv Tech scene and they talk about the um you know the the the progressive aspects of Israel the Gay Pride parades and so on they don't really talk about what is the ideology that is now becoming an increasingly um important part of the country and in fact the motivating ideology for likely a majority of the population which is this Messianic Zionism which completely rejects the idea that other human beings have any rights and so um I mean just to give you a glimpse about this of course you don't see this on your TV and you
(21:05) don't hear about it from your favorite uh based influencers on the internet but the the current minister of National Security in the government also one of the most important people in Israeli politics at this point his name is itamar Ben there's video of him dancing in a wedding and in that wedding the wedding was organized by a bunch of settlers and the West Banks of people who live on Stolen Palestinian land and they were dancing with a picture of a baby that was burned to death by these settlers or their friends a 18-month
(21:41) baby was living in a family house with his mom and dad and they burned the house down on the family while the family was in there and they have songs about the baby celebrating the burning of the baby and it's become such a part of the folklore that they dance to it in their weddings and this guy was at the wedding while they were dancing this and this video of him that you could see um on Twitter and this isn't just some fluke you see this over and over and over again with uh just really the natural conclusion of this of the
(22:16) Indulgence of this kind of fanaticism of the Indulgence of this kind of religious fanaticism wherein you dehumanize somebody else you completely um refuse to accept that other people have rights and you you base that on some religious ideas that you have and then you act like an animal towards other human beings that have not aggressed against you and then of course you wonder why these people fight back and this is ultimately what I view as the root cause of the conflict because before this kind of Messianic um
(22:50) religious fundamentalist ideology came to Palestine from 637 up until 1947 up until 1948 or let's say 1917 when the British took over so from 637 to 1917 when Palestine was under various different Islamic rulers it was possible for Muslims Christians and Jews to live and own land in Palestine and Jews lived there as part of the people of Palestine and they had friendly friendly relations with um Muslims and Christians and so this the the the problem of anti semitism that was huge in Europe at that time was not as big a problem anywhere
(23:35) as big as a problem and I I I've come across this text of um a rabbi from Poland traveling to Palestine in 1747 and going to Hebron where there was a small Jewish community and talking about just how friendly the relations were between the Jewish community and the uh Muslim and Christian uh communities and he he was saying with surprised that on Shabbat they just um close they leave the their U they leave their Court yard open and nobody goes there nobody bothers them Muslims come and celebrate with them on their
(24:13) religious occasions and everything's very friendly it was like that and so the the idea that Palestinians are just congenitally predisposed to anti-Semitism is ridiculous nonsense it's only believable by people who have absolutely no idea about what actually going on on the ground which is that since the birth of Z of the Zionist movement the property rights of Palestinians have been considered null and void and any Palestinian who doesn't like it and tries to find back is legitimate Target for murder and the
(24:48) result is tens probably hundreds of Palestinians hundreds of thousands of Palestinians by now have been killed and I mean the vast majority of Palestinian property has been stolen hundreds of thousands of houses have been demolished even before this current Onslaught on Gaza which is like nothing we'd seen before something like 140,000 houses Palestinian houses were demolished by Israel over the past 80 years something like 90% of Palestinians land was stolen tens of thousands probably hundreds of thousands of Palestinians
(25:21) have been imprisoned by Israel pretty much everybody or not everybody but I mean a big chunk of the population ends up going to prison and subjected to enormously brutal forms of torture it's just incredible the the kind of sadism that they're subjected to because you're talking about a population that is not viewed as human so the Israeli prisoners prison Masters just don't think of prisoners as human beings and they do incredibly horrific sadus things to them and this has just been the case over and
(25:52) over and over and over again and it's continues and that's that's what it's uh that's that's religious fundamentalism it's really odd cuz I I recorded with Whitney I think like a year ago Whitney web and she made me aware of like the Christian Zionist movement which is trying to bring about the end days which sort of supports everything going on there and you dig into that particular sect of Christianity and similarly to what you just described like has no connection to what was actually written in the Bible
(26:22) or the gospels was sort of made up on the go to bring about end times and so you have this weird contingent of Christians around the world that are Christian fundamentalists that that are pushing for this too um it's just all very confusing and sad and it gets to the point of like just really understanding history and how we got here is important um because if you don't understand that you can just take what is being put out there as as the truth and it seems like there's a lot of research that needs to be done in
(26:59) understanding of History to actually have a well-rounded view of how we got here and what's actually going on today yeah I think this this I've been looking more and more into this whole Christian Zionism thing and it's absolutely uh fascinating how that's been uh utilized um I mean I think it's it's actually hilarious because the the reference Bible that all of these dispensationalist Christians base their in s anties upon is something written in the 20th century by a con artist who had
(27:34) spent time in jail for forgery that he was a lawyer he had no religious training his name was scoffield and he'd been in jail for forgery and then he decided that he was going to write the Bible that is going to shape the views of tens of millions of uh Christians for the next Century or so and it's uh it's really remarkable because you start looking into the um interpretation of the verses that are shown as indicating that you need to be supporting this current secular Mass murdering bunch of uh terrorists uh in a government and um
(28:16) it's it's first of all it's all in the footnotes so all of his analysis is in the footnotes and all of these stuff is in the footnotes that it's he added and I was looking into the spe the particular verses and it's it's pretty remarkable how they've been um interpreted in a way that clearly makes no sense so um God tells Abraham I will bless you um and then that's supposedly interpreted as being a blessing of the um people of Israel which uh who hadn't even existed at that point because um
(28:53) Abraham had preceded that it was much earlier so the entire thing I think is extremely suspect on theological basis and uh it's uh it's U it's not the predominant form of Christianity anywhere in the world and it's um being used in a very very political way because um this is again the insanity once look once your religion goes into a point where you think it's okay to kill innocent people you probably need to sit down and have a very hard talk with yourself about what kind of person you are and
(29:29) what kind of God you're worshiping if uh the you know if religion was a mechanism for getting people to kill each other and getting people to kill innocent people then it wouldn't quite work that's not the point the point is of religion is very different than this kind of brutality and um it's it's pretty startling that people consider themselves Christian and then think that what's going on G in Gaza is something that their faith compels them to support I find that absolutely absolutely
(30:03) stunning yeah and I mean as you mentioned earlier I mean throughout my life at least um we've been taught that like uh Islam is the religion of of war and and um basically conflict and it's a what's the word I'm looking for like a militaristic theology if you will and um what are some of the mischaracterizations of that obviously there have been fundamentalist Islamic groups that have popped up and exist and still exists today but how are people in the west may be misinterpreting what the Quran is saying
(30:40) yeah I mean I think uh look obviously a lot of bad things has been done in the name of all kind of kinds of religions um and again religious fanaticism and fundamentalism once you have that righteousness of knowing that this is what God wants then you are in for in the case of many people I think that you're able to just get over your humanity and get over the things that make human civilization possible and I think this is extremely extremely dangerous in whatever religion um but I I'd say though you
(31:17) know in Islam the rules of war in Islam are pretty clearly laid out that you should not kill Innocents you should not even kill the cows of your enemies you should not even kill the uh tree you shouldn't even cut off a tree um in war that's that's the explicit text now obviously some people misinterpret it or interpret it differently and justify that you know in case you have no other um uh way of fighting then targeting civilians would be legitimate so a lot of the islamist terrorists would uh would would try and go with that
(31:55) interpretation but I think ultimately it's very similar the situation you see with um any religion in that people can get that self-righteousness that then supersedes the basic moral code of humanity and of religion which is don't kill don't steal don't violate the rights of others and the self-righteousness can make them go and ignore the basics fundamentalists of uh the religion of morality of what makes civilized life possible and this is really what it comes down to I mean when you think about what's going on
(32:30) ultimately what I'd like to tell people is this can you think of anywhere in the world where you could apply Israeli occupation to a piece of land and expect that there would be no conflict I mean the percentage of uh Jews in u the us today is similar to the percentage of Jews in Palestine when the bford Declaration came out something like I think it's around 2 or 3% something like that 4% maybe not sure the exact numbers but it's that kind of range so imagine if you said you wanted to make the us or any particular state
(33:04) in the US a Homeland for Jews and then 95% of the population in that country or state or region is not Jewish what is going to go on what is what is going to happen if you try to implement the same laws that Israel has about uh who gets to own land who gets to keep land who gets to have their houses demolished and who gets to get uh free houses and then try to imply them anywhere else you're going to have conflict and that's just the reality of it it seems like things are pretty dire right now as you mentioned earlier the
(33:40) resolution that's been laid forth by Israeli government isn't really encouraging um and I not you had Thomas Massi on who obviously has been speaking out against uh apac's influence here in the US and like do you think this is up to the west to really step in and sort of be the mediator and say hey this is this can't go on I mean I think that's probably the only thing that's going to stop it other than some kind of full-on regional War which would be absolutely devastating because realistically and
(34:16) Israeli generals have said this from practically the second week of this war which is if the US stops giving Israel weapons the war is over they can't keep firing I the amount of of artillery that they've dropped and the amount of explosives that they've dropped over Gaza and Gaza is a tiny tiny area it's about 400 square kilometers so it's really tiny and um if you look at the amount of uh ammunition that's been dropped on it I mean it's practically left no spot un bombed at least once
(34:50) everything's been destroyed everything's been devastated the amount of money that it cost to create so much destruction and throw all of this stuff is completely unfathomable for a small Society of 10 million people like Israel to be able to pull off on their own it's just the the industrial capacity to make this many weapons and drop them all the time for nine going on 10 months almost now is just Unthinkable for uh for any practical purpose and the only reason it goes on is because of the US and the
(35:21) only reason the US uh keeps supporting this is because of stupid domestic us Politics as you both political parties in the US are just very obviously puppet regimes of Israeli intelligence Services it's not even debatable at this point um the only people who don't see anything wrong with it are people who just are so conditioned you know basically the NPCs who are so conditioned to take things as they are and go along with authority and not question anything and so they just think it's completely normal for a
(35:55) country to have all of its political class constantly kissing the ass of a foreign country um it's not that common historically but when it does happen there's a very clear NM for it it's a puppet state it's a state that's run by politicians of another country and this is exactly the situation in the US today I think um it's very obvious both political parties are completely on board with whatever it is that the Israeli government does the Israeli government faces more um criticism and
(36:28) objections in Israel from its own people and its own Parliament than it does from the American Congress no American Congressman with the exception of Massie well I mean there there are a few but very few a lot fewer American congressmen will be critical of the Israeli government than Israeli um parliamentarians and it's absurd because the US pays tens of billions of dollars to Israel in all kinds of uh ways and forms and iic the relationship is just uh so clearly dysfunctional for anybody who spends 5 minutes looking past the
(37:03) ridiculous idiotic propaganda headlines um Israel's attacked the USS Liberty 1967 murdered 37 American Sailors and injured a couple hundred and it they did it deliberately they did it for a very long time they did it while they very clearly saw there were American flags and the uh staff the sailors on this on the Liberty did everything they could to communicate and they did communicate that there was an American and we and there are recordings that have been released from the Israeli Pilots telling the Israeli Command Center look this is
(37:38) an American ship and the command center saying yes never mind hit it and they kept hitting it with artillery and with boats and the plan was to sink it and leave no survivors and they and they came very close to sinking it but the USS Liberty crew managed to get a distress signal out and another American boat started in towards the USS Liberty and that then caused the Israelis to stop before they could finish the job now why did they do that they did it because they wanted the Americans to think that it was the Egyptians who did
(38:12) it and then they were going to get the Americans to go to war with Egypt possibly nuclear war with Egypt because that was during the 1967 war now that's just been completely covered up nobody talks about it in American politics nobody mentions it nobody wants to investigate it nobody wants to talk about it there was a very sham investigation that was done over 5 six days and then it was covered up and they said oh well it was an accident and they didn't know it was a theater of war fog of War nonsense it was a clear summer
(38:43) day in the Mediterranean with giant American flags flying on an air on on a giant ship and continuous signals from the sailors saying we are American and the Israeli command knew exactly what they're doing and yet nobody in American politics dares talk about this and that's why I think you know American political class are traitors there's no other way of putting it if you are willing to watch your soldiers die and not say or do anything about it let alone retaliate I mean nobody even mentions the idea of retaliation as even
(39:17) being possible but you know just at least issue a condemnation issue a strongly worded statement none of them will do it and that's truly remarkable and I think um before I I I heard about the evidence for it being an attempt to implicate the Egyptians I used to think that this was just a demonstration of um uh dominance by the Israeli military to the American Military that look if you come near us we're going to kill you and to show you how serious we are we're going to kill your uh we're going to sink one of your
(39:54) boats and we're going to show you how your um iCal leadership is not going to do anything about it because remember the US military is under civilian leadership civilian leadership is are a bunch of traitors and we're going to show you now I don't think that was exactly the intention I think the intention was more likely now I think that they wanted to um implicate Egypt although of course we'll never know because you know you can't have an investigation into those things you save investigations for important things like
(40:21) you know Bill Clinton getting a you don't care about these kind of things and so we we'll never really know but I think the message has been uh very clearly delivered to everybody in the military brass that if you are in any way objectionable to the Israelis there is nothing that your military that your civilian leadership will do to support you you are essentially run by a traitor regime that will side with a foreign country over you as a soldier yeah and obviously this is uh highly divisive in the United
(41:03) States and frankly something like I've tried to stay away from but there is just something that's always nagged at me particularly over the last few years that and just getting back to like first principal thinking that is never really computed for me and it was I'm from Pennsylvania originally and during the midterm elections the last time around Dr Oz was running for uh the Senate and P a and I remember getting fed uh a campaign ad for him where he gave this very impassioned speech um because he was
(41:35) getting hounded for having dual citizenship um between the US and turkey he went on this very impassionate speech saying I have this passport this turkus passport and this dual citizenship because my mother has dementia and the only way I can take care of her her medical bills and make sure that she's getting good care in turkeys if I have this passport and citizenship and and able to navigate the the Health Care system in turkey and at the end of the speech he said but I'm so passionate about the people of Pennsylvania and I
(42:08) want to go to the Senate and make a difference for pennsylvanians and I will give up this passport um to do that if I have to and going back to the tip that Senator Massie has been on it just like first principal thinking like the far act like foreign government shouldn't be able to influence individual American politicians it's always like in my view it's like all right if we're going to let one do it maybe we should let all do it and if we're going to say we're not going to let anybody do it maybe we
(42:37) shouldn't let anybody do it and it's just first principles thinking like if we're going to make these rules like they should be followed and some people will say that that's an attack on Israel or whatever but I think just as an American thinking first principles it's like what are the rules and are we actually following them yeah it's pretty startling I mean I think this was this was a major thing that also happened in the 1960s and I think the 1960s were very pival in the US is R relationship so you have the USS
(43:07) Liberty but I think before that um the U you know John F Kennedy was trying to get the precursor to APAC to register as a foreign agent but then they shut it down and they opened up APAC and so they managed to continue with that and I think Lyndon Johnson was extremely favorable to Israel so that period created a very strong bias in the uh Regional um intervention of the US in that region the US wasn't all that active before then but since 1967 since the war they became they became a huge supporter of Israel and they've been providing Israel
(43:51) with non-stop weapons and funding essentially infinite Limitless amounts of money and funding un conditionally for all throughout that whole period right after the USS Liberty and um I think it's U it's it's it's absurd I mean if if you if you think of the us as a country then you wouldn't put up with any of this I mean there's no reason why this any country should get this kind of treatment and of course the really ridiculous thing here is the people use the word Ally to describe the US and
(44:24) Israel and it is really really funny I mean the every time I hear an American say it I really really laugh it's it's it's it's ridiculous childish fantasy level um stupidity it's like watching a grown-up going around and talking seriously about what Santa Claus is going to do whenever I hear Ally that's exactly how ridiculous it is the term Ally has a meaning words mean things and the word Ally means a country two governments that sign an agreement a mutual defense agreement that contains
(44:54) specific terms in case this thing happen happens then we will uh give you this and in case that thing happens then you will give us that if we're attacked by that country you will fight with us if we're attacked by that country you may not fight with us there's a whole bunch of agreements about terms that are laid out the US has no such agreement with Israel so the idea that Israel is an ally is completely ridiculous it makes no sense and operationally Israel is not an ally Israel's never fired a single bullet in
(45:26) any American War that's just never happened and the US has obviously provided infinite endless financial and Military Support to Israel in all of Israel's Wars but uh the US is uh it doesn't exactly do these as part of any kind of official defense agreement it's just it's it's just like the US military is an an open buffet for the Israeli government to just come and take whatever they want and of course there's all kinds of spying um cases that continuously get wrapped up so Phil
(46:04) geraldi a former CIA agent keeps writing about this just the number of um cases of spying for the Israeli military that get uncovered in the US Military and then they immediately get shut down politically because there's no political will to pursue any of these um investigations and of course course the other thing that's really ridiculous about the term Ally is that the majority of the US's Wars are not the US's Wars they don't matter for the us at all the only reason the US is fighting all of
(46:37) those Wars is Israel and the US has no business whatsoever fighting a war in Iraq or in Syria or Yemen or in uh Libya or in any of those places and I think it's very clear now you look at what the new conservatives were saying in the 1990s this was the vision that they had and which 911 allowed them to implement which is that they wanted to take out all these countries that were hostile to Israel and Israel couldn't take them out so the US did it and that's really it I think every single other justification
(47:12) for war for Israel is completely nonsensical for Wars in for for America's Middle East Wars it's completely nonsensical there's there's no conceivable way you could um you could make any justification for it people say this was a war for oil and that's just ridiculous um you look at Switzerland and look at Kenya look at Ecuador look at New Zealand look at Thailand all of those countries are capable of securing oil people all over the world can get oil and the way they get it is they just pay somebody and oil
(47:47) is vastly abundant in our planet it's being produced all over the world and it isn't as if you know you you invade Iraq and then you get lifetime supply of free oil for Americans whatever happens in Iraq Americans are still going to have to pay for oil on the pump and you may remember in 2003 the delusional Americans who thought all right we got war and now we're going to get cheap oil and then the price of oil just kept shooting up because you know the Because if you think war is going to give you cheaper
(48:20) stuff you are an idiot and you deserve um the prop the poverty you get because you're not just an ID you're also Criminal um but there's absolutely no reason for the US to be involved in any of those Wars and all of this talk about geopolitics and Regional dominance and projecting strength and bringing democracy none of that stuff makes sense no American needs to die in order for people in Iraq to have democracy I mean look at the state of American democracy you watched the last election and you
(48:47) saw how that one worked out um you know everybody's capable of running their own stupid rigged elections it you don't need to go kill them in order to do that it's it's not that important and all of the other justifications they really make no sense so it's not just that the um Israel doesn't fight with the US's Wars Us's Wars are just Israel's Wars yeah I mean this is as a millennial who has basically grown up with all the the wars in the United States um or excuse me the
(49:20) wars in the Middle East that the United States embarked on I mean that made me especially in my younger ages and still today like very anti-war like that it never made sense to me and I remember the the the like the the war drumming that went on when I was like 10 11 12 years old in school when we were invading Iraq and Afghanistan and it was just really odd even at a young age I sort of was cognizant and recognized that in middle school or not even Middle School was grade school I was in like fourth or fifth grade at the time like
(49:55) they were really trying to instill this form of patriotism in um war mongering in young kids and it always seem odd to me um and never sat well with me and then obviously you move into the 2010s you get the Wikileaks the Snowden leaks and you find out that the government isn't really um working on your behalf as an American citizen and again part of the reason why I brought you on because I I want to get to the core of these issues so that we can get to a point of peace um because I don't think these wars make
(50:29) sense I think the way you described them is perfect there was no reason for us to go over there I don't think we should act as this moral you know morally Superior nation that is going to spread democracy I don't I just don't think that's how it works I think it's a sign of like late stage Empire decline it's happened many times throughout history but led to the fall of Rome and other Empires and in history's past as this expans if I may interrupt you here let's just to give the Romans their credit they
(51:01) really weren't anywhere near as stupid as this when they went and invaded an area they got tribute they got the people who lived there to pay them money and that money went back to Rome and allowed the Emperors of Rome to have incredibly debaucherous parties so at least it made a lot more sense than the idiotic American ideas of we going to go there and spend trillions of dollars to try and get these people to have rigged elections like us like the the there was no taxation imposed on Iraqi people to go give money to the US government if
(51:33) that was the case American imperialism would make a lot more sense we've got the biggest military in the world we're going to go out there and try and get money for our government but that was not the case so you can't really compare it to the Romans the Romans were um you know they got outstretched but they were running a business which you know I believe eventually you're right it it does fall apart I don't think it's the right way to build an Empire to keep trying to conquer people and get money from them
(51:58) you're better off saving your military and maintaining your strength and only taking in populations that want to rule over you still a lot less stupid than whatever America's doing these days yeah yeah and we've got a lot of problems here that we need to fix uh $35 trillion in debt almost uh 2117 trillion in unfunded liabilities um people are suffering people are fat people are getting dumber and that's what's part like partly frustrating about this whole situation of American militaristic Empire expansion is that
(52:37) like it's not benefiting everyday Americans back here on us soil in fact you can make a very strong argument I think you do in your books and your economic analysis that you have to fund these wars somehow and it means going into massive amounts of debt and expanding the monetary base which really destroys people's purchasing power over time and their quality of life overall yeah absolutely what um I know we've uh we had to reschedule this so we've we've got a tighter rip than I hope for but I
(53:13) think maybe just switching to bitcoin like could you see um if Bitcoin adoption were to proliferate and the debt situation here in the United States and globally throughout the Western world where to become exacerbated which seems like we're on that trajectory like you see there's like a forcing function of just not being able to pay for this um and Bitcoin being adopted to really hone in this Empire this militaristic Empire expansion yeah I mean I'll be honest with you I mean this is really the U
(53:49) this is why we Bitcoin uh like I like to focus publicly on the ngu aspect number go up and cheer on the money aspect of Bitcoin because that's what's really going to make the difference ultimately the only people not the only but the main reason that people are going to get in is self-interest and that's what Bitcoin has for it and that's why Bitcoin doesn't need me or you because U people are self-interested so for me it's very it's very um it's very important to emphasize that
(54:20) aspect if you're trying to attract people to bitcoin but I think the real value in Bitcoin is perhaps more important than Bitcoin Rising is killing the Fiat monster uh which I discuss in detail in the Fiat standard I mean just freeing the world from this Mass Larsen that we've been subjected to for the last century where all of our wealth is constantly being devalued and robbed and being given to governments that are being able to spend it with a lot less accountability than they would if they were just relying on taxes and it's led
(54:57) to an enormous amount of suffering all over the world so I mean if you asked me 10 years ago and U where would Bitcoin be 10 years from now I mean I they I'd have been careful probably and um cautious but I would have been optimistic that by now it would have grown enough to have um made a serious difference in the world in that it would have replaced the dollar as the main currency and then took away government's ability to finance themselves through inflation obviously I optimism is just a great way of ensuring this
(55:43) appointment um so it hasn't worked out quite well that quite that well at least not yet but um I mean I don't know I I could be optimistic about it but uh I don't know I'm also I've also heard people talk about the US fiscal crisis every year for the last 15 years the US dollar crisis every year since 2008 really people have been pounding the table saying it's all this house of cards is coming down it's all going to crash next week next month next quarter everything's going to crash everything
(56:18) it's going to be the end but it hasn't happened and I think um I mean yes the situation now is worse there's more de accumulating it is getting worse it is getting um by many metrics unsustainable and you're tempted to start um dancing on the graves but I don't think we're there yet and who knows I mean they just keep managing to pull more rabbits out of the hat and to keep the Ponzi going for longer so they might be able to pull another one and keep it going having said all that um you know
(56:56) to try and put in all my academic hat um and to try and hedge my bets but having said all that i' still say that you know we've reached the point now where the US is spending more on interest than it is spending on Military which you know spends a lot on the military there's a lot of murdering going on in the world financed by the US military so imagine how much money is being spent on the interest on the national debt just to keep this debt Ponzi going Americans are having to take on tons and tons and tons of
(57:36) taxes um to pay tons and tons of taxes so it is reaching a point of unsustainability I would say by most metrics I think Neil Ferguson has a metric where he says this is the turning point no Empires recovered from this once you start paying more for debt then you're paying for the military it's curtains that might be the case but then again um if if it comes this way if it comes through government bankruptcies and defaults and hyperinflations we're going to who knows I mean we might just see a very very
(58:10) ugly few years with all of these conflicts all over the world continuing to burn on more causing More Death more destruction and more horror all over the world definitely the most tumultuous period in my life when you consider what's going on in Gaza what's going on in Ukraine the saber rattling around Thailand or excuse me Taiwan right now and it see it almost seems like a desperate like it seems like the incumbent power structure uh the governments are like pushing us towards this because they know they need
(58:43) an excuse to print more money and they want to see all this conflict around the world because it allows them to really run fear propaganda campaigns that ultimately um enable them to push forward laws that give them more control um in war time and that's what I hope bringing you on and trying to have more conversations like this is educate people like you're being manipulated um emotionally via propaganda it's time to stop I think Co taught me this thing which is for about 99 99.9% of people believe that the
(59:22) government shouldn't be spending money on everything but it should be spending money on emergencies so only the. 1% is like the absolute most extreme Anarchist nuts like me or the absolute most extreme communist nuts who believe the government should own and run every single thing including your toothbrush outside of that everybody falls in that Shades of Gray category where they're um having to choose when and where they think it's okay for the government to steal your stuff um because they've
(59:52) found a good story for it and pretty much everybody in that 99 point 9% middle agrees that in the case of emergency all bets are off they get to do whatever they want and so don't be surprised that you're constantly being inundated with emergencies every day is an emergency because every emergency allows them to get the consent of the majority of the people to printing money taxation uh totalitarian things power grabs all kinds of fun governmental activities become possible when you accept that there is a crisis recognize
(1:00:30) that you're being manipulated that's like if you're listening to this and you uh have an introspective moment where you realize you've been manipulated in the past I think Co is obviously the most glaring example because we just went through it um but I I hope I like to think that it woke some people up who originally got duped and then recognized that it was just a massive scam um that ultimately led to the devaluation of their currency and the depreciation of their quality of life um that's the and
(1:01:07) I'm more hopeful these days because I do think some people have woken up but um there's definitely more people that need to recognize that they're being manipulated your your fear instincts are are targeted by these governments and these politicians and you just need to recognize whenever you do get fearful because of something they say it's like oh are they intentionally doing this to uh get a reaction out of me that would benefit them in their control over me in the long run yeah absolutely I
(1:01:38) think yeah definitely Co was a major one because um it it was it got so blatant at a point where it was very clear that uh I mean that there's that there's a Power Trip at some point that people in power had all these tiny little despots and it was like they charged was just hey let's see how far you can push this yeah and they pushed it pretty far they pushed it pretty far um yeah no I think about it for my children too particularly my oldest who was born right before the lockdowns it affected his life he didn't
(1:02:17) see many people for the first two years of his life because we were on lockdowns and led to a speech delay and that's something that actually makes me angry because he started his life off um at a disadvantage because of these despots who wanted more control over over Society it's actually pretty infuriating when you think about it and how it affects you at at the individual level and then the excess deaths that have that have materialized after the the vaccine roll out and um it's touched my life
(1:02:52) I've had people in my um my personal circles that have been affected by this and um not all of them recognize it but um I'm pretty pretty confident that the effects of what happened uh in between 2020 and 2023 are have led to a material um degradation of quality of life and in some cases like literally leading to death which yeah should be infuriating yeah I mean death rates have been up significantly since then and and fertility rates have been down significantly as well and I don't think you can just dismiss these as flukes and
(1:03:34) I think you know the the trend for birth rates at least was there before but it Amplified significantly after that and it's it it's I mean for me the whole thing honestly from the beginning like I I I'm pretty proud of the fact that since January 2020 I called this thing a scam I didn't know exactly what was the scam I didn't know exactly what they were lying about but I knew it was definitely a scam because I was already aware of the world health organizations and the pharmaceutical Mafia and how they've
(1:04:06) tried to do these pandemics over and over and over again and constantly ramping up their um operations of getting people stoked up and pedling their pharmaceutical stuff so I knew this was what was going on I knew they were definitely exaggerating what was going on but I wasn't quite sure how and why but um and I wasn't obviously very uh I didn't talk about this publicly much at that point but for me it was very clear from the beginning that you know this whole thing is going to be a very Mar a very big marketing campaign
(1:04:39) for certain products that they're going to be pushing at the end and that's really what it comes down to like the entire thing is just a big giant test to then get you to take the magic potion that was it that's what it comes down to and yes there's been a lot of there's been a lot of damage done to people so many lives ruined so many businesses destroyed so many um Health uh negative Health Damage Done to people stuff you say about children is absolutely infuriating for me I mean my daughter was four at that time when she
(1:05:17) should be out there learning about the world and forced to be stuck at home it's truly infuriating but I really think the real thing ultim was just are you going to take that magic potion that's what it comes down to and it's just always the same thing with all these panics there's always uh some very strong propaganda direction to push the panic in a certain way to push the crisis messaging in a certain way to Market a solution and and that's what you saw in um October 7 where all of this
(1:05:49) incredible atrocity propaganda got played up about all kinds of things um and and they um they really hype this up in order to justify the genocide that they've been angling for for a very very long time so all of these stories about Mass rapes and all the stories about burning babies alive all of that has been completely shown to be false all of the most extreme ones and it seems quite convincing that the vast majority maybe not the vast majority but a very large number of the civilians that were killed were killed
(1:06:27) by Friendly Fire because the Israelis didn't want their citizens to be taken as hostages and this is a policy that the Israeli government has followed for a very long time which is we'd rather kill our own than have them taken away by enemies and um it's a way to discourage more and more of these kind of kidnappings and so um you know when you look at all of the hundreds of cars that were burned at the festival there's no way that a bunch of gorillas with a couple of guns can burn these I let just
(1:06:54) think about it logistically hard it is to burn hundreds of cars but you can do it with helicopters very easily safe um thank you for coming on and talking about this it's uh it's uh important to get the word out and I think what you've been doing is um putting your neck out there and being as vocal as you have been over the last year almost um is important because it certainly helped give me a perspective um and understanding more well-rounded understanding of the history of all this and um really leaning into like at the
(1:07:33) end of the day comes down to not only ultimately it's a human rights issue but beyond that like property rights and thinking from first principles and it's important to get to and it's conversations that people really don't like to have because U it makes them feel a particular way but I think as it stands today considering all the conflict that's going on around the world these conversations are more important than ever and people need to have the courage to have them so just give you massive props for going out
(1:08:07) there and speaking your mind and and really getting these ideas out there because I think it's imperative that we do that right now thank you sir and uh the MVP on that one is Bitcoin obviously it's what allows us to actually speak our mind I I don't have a Fiat job to cancel me um so that's why I can uh that's why you know I've been outspoken on all kinds of things when people would have usually just gone along with the herd climate change covid Israel the scams are endless the nutrition diet heart
(1:08:46) hypothesis um so much so many scams so little time but you know we're U we're still going to be out there busting them as long as we can so thanks for having me man I appreciate you giving me the platform no appreciate you um enjoy the rest of your Friday go have some fun with your family and uh I'm sure we'll catch up soon awesome take care my man take care all right peace and love freaks
