Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello.
Welcome to the call like I see it podcast.
I'm James Keyes, and in this episode of call it like I see it, we're going to react to some of the revelations in the recent congressional hearing on UFO's, or in the more modern phrasing, uaps.
And later on, we're going to discuss the judicial reform efforts going on in Israel right now, and how what many are describing as essentially a parliamentary power grab has really animated a large segment of the israeli population to show their distaste and displeasure for what's happening through mass demonstration and protests.
Joining me today is a man who knows when it's time to make a scene and knows when it's time to lay low. Tunde Yoga and Lana Toonday, are you ready to show us why there is no limit as long as you're alive?
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Yep. I think I'll just lay low, though.
I won't talk too much. Here, let you start the show.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: Now, we're recording this on July 31, 2023. And last week, the House Oversight subcommittee on National Security, the border and Foreign affairs had a public hearing with many witnesses, most notably the self proclaimed whistleblower David Grush.
And in this hearing, we heard a lot of people claiming to have information about unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP. Uaps. And also the federal government's knowledge about them and efforts to conceal this knowledge and to do stuff with the. With them. So to get us started, Tundang, how much legitimacy do you view these UFO slash Uap and alien life claims that we saw in the congressional hearing?
[00:02:04] Speaker B: Man, it's a great question, which I've been dancing around as I prepared for it, because it's just a fascinating thing to see. And I think, you know, we've talked about this just privately as well. Like, our government is like, at the point of admitting that at least unidentified aerial phenomena are real. I know that that's just that not necessarily saying they're alien in nature, like non earth wise. And I know that this gentleman is making some claims that actually go that direction. But I know that when we were kids and even prior to our birth, like, you know, UFO's were like a huge issue and the government really always acted like they didn't know. So that's why to me, it's just interesting that we're seeing all this play out live, but on a topic that is extremely difficult to try and navigate as a layman from the outside. Right. Because we have no backdrop as to what either aliens are or look like or what they could be doing. Or what? Or if they existed. And then obviously we understand that, just like what happened earlier this year. And we did a show on that chinese balloon back in February. We know that there's stuff in the sky that necessarily isn't identified, but it's still human made or they're natural phenomena. So this one I do view with a little bit of skepticism after preparing for today and reading a bit, which I know we'll get into, but I just find it interesting that we're talking about this and also interesting that it's not, like, as big a deal as it might have been, like in the eighties or something.
[00:03:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: If the government was like, oh, yeah, we're gonna investigate UFO's, people had less.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: Stuff going on there.
[00:03:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, the country would be at a standstill. Like, what do you mean that you're gonna investigate this stuff real? And now it's like, who cares?
[00:03:48] Speaker A: Yeah, our attention span is, you know, only goes for TikTok or YouTube shorts.
I mean, honestly, I'll say this. I give about, like, it's close to 0% legitimacy to it as, you know, like, I don't rule anything out, you know, when it comes to the quote unquote unknown, you know, like, there are things that there are definitely things going on in the. In the universe, in the galaxy that we can't explain, that we. That, you know, that. That are beyond what we're aware of and know about. But in this instance in particular, like, the claims that he's making, it doesn't seem like if he's making these kind of claims, then I would think you'd really have the goods. You know, like, so if you're looking at what they're saying as far as, oh, well, there's been these Uaps. They've been recovered and the government has them and trying to reverse engineer. I mean, I have a hard time believing that alien life, which I do believe is out there. If you look, if you consider how much space is out there, how much is in just the Milky Way.
And like the way they said there's 400 billion stars in the Milky Way, and most of them have planets, or almost all of them have planets. So, I mean, come on, there's life out there, you know, but if any life out there, which is around right now, which again. Cause if the universe is twelve or 13 billion years old, then, you know, like, that's. There's a long time frame there. We're in a slice of history, but let's say somebody has this kind of technology where they can get like hundreds of thousands of light years away. And then we say that. So they got this technology to do all that, and then they crash when they get here. It's like, well, come on. If they got all that kind of technology, I'm pretty sure that they could navigate around and not just immediately crash or crash you once they get here. So that kind of stuff makes me the stuff that makes us the center of everything. Like, oh, you know, like there's all these aliens or these, these aliens, and they all, what they care about is us and learning about us and studying us. That's where my b's detectors start going. Like, hold up, this sounds like this. If we're centering ourselves in the story, then it's probably a story that's more made up. But that doesn't say that I think that people legitimately believe they said something, saw something.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: Go ahead, jump in on that one. Because I hadn't planned to go here, but until you said that, it hit my brain with something. And this can be considered inflammatory, what I'm going to say. So I don't mean to be offensive, but it's kind of reminds me a little bit of religion, right, when you're saying that it's a very self centered way to look like the argument that put Galileo in jail, right? That the earth had to be the center of the universe.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: But it's not just religion, though, remember? Because up until up until, you know, Copernicus and Galileo, everybody thought that the earth was the center of the universe, you know? And so not just religion. It wasn't just a religious belief. That was just like, yeah, okay, yeah, everything is. We're the center of everything. So that's just a very human kind of approach to whatever's out.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: No, no, that's what I say. It reminds me of that. That's what I said, that the intent wasn't to go on a tangent and start talking about religion, but the idea that it's a very self centered view of something, obviously the universe is so vast that we, you know, our brains can't even handle, handle it. But to your point, right, like, there's, there's an estimated 400 billion stars in our galaxy, and then they estimate there's over 100 billion galaxies, right? So if you want to really go there and say, okay, let's figure out how many planets. I mean, this stuff is like galaxy brain stuff. So I think that the idea that, and that's why to me, the religion comparison just came up to my mind, because it's like, okay, if God does exist and created this whole vast universe, they think so big. Do you think the dudes really just paying attention to us 100% of the time? Nothing else to pay attention to, so. But.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: Or they come because, remember, everything is very spaced out, you know, like, all this stuff, just our galaxy is, you know, like, what, a hundred thousand light years across, you know, and so just our galaxy, you know, and then there's. There's all these other galaxies, you know, that are out there in the. In the billions or the trillions of galaxies out there. And so, yeah, it's a very self centered kind of mindset to say that they're. That they're coming here.
[00:07:48] Speaker B: You know, it's interesting, too, from this, because I was going to have a joke and say, I think it could have been like Yoda's escape pod when he was after revenge of the Sith. Maybe he got lost. Cause, remember, it was in a galaxy far, a long time ago, very far away. So maybe it took, like, it would.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: Take a long time.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe it was like a thousand light years to get here, to crash. Maybe we'll get a thousand light years.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: Wouldn't do it, though.
[00:08:09] Speaker B: That's the thing.
The other thing now we'll get into. But I was just saying that what's also interesting about this, if you really think about it, because I went back and looked at, like, I wanted to look at pictures of the Roswell, New Mexico crash site. Remember, the debris that was recovered in 1947, which is kind of considered when this UFO stuff started, kind of the sightings and people. And first of all, if you look anybody go back and look at. There's Google, you know, the Roswell UFO crash, 1947.
And the pictures look like pieces of a weather balloon. Right? Like, meaning, I understand that probably back in the forties, that type of material and technology and synthetic stuff was not common for people to see. So that did look like something advanced back then. But when you look at it now and you understand what it takes for anything to get through the atmosphere or go through space for long periods of time, and you got, you know, everything from meteors to tiny, you know, 1 mm pieces of debris flying at 50,000 miles an hour through space, that it.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: Probably would take 50,000 miles a second.
[00:09:14] Speaker B: I mean, probably would take something more than what I'm seeing in that crash site to actually. Actually get through space to make it here. So what I realize is, you know, it's, as humans, we do a great job of assuming that everything that's going on now is how it is like just how everything is either past or future. So I realized in going back and doing some research, you know, there's talk of gods, right? All the way going back to ancient world, but there's not too much talk of alien beings coming down to earth until humans started getting comfortable with the idea that, you know, like, air, you know, flight was possible, you know, like airplanes and rockets and all that. And it kind of makes sense that this didn't really start until after the second world war, when the technology was possible for us to see lights at night, you know, and all this. Most of it is, you know, military testing and things like that. But before, like, in the 1850s, no one was like, oh, man, there's all these aliens coming to get us. Like, you didn't hear that in just culture back then.
[00:10:20] Speaker A: That actually leads to my second thought about this, actually. Is that my. The reason again? Right? I give very little. I give. I believe that any of this stuff is possible. Like, I don't.
I'm just saying, these accounts, to me, I didn't see or hear anything that made me say, okay, yeah, this. This sounds more likely than not, or even reasonably legitimate.
And the reason for that is that, like, all of this stuff, it sound. It always sounds like whatever they're talking about is stuff that's either just beyond our current technology or almost within our current technology, as far as what we may find out in five or ten years. Kind of like your point about the Roswell thing. And, like, they're saying, oh, we see these types of things, and they're moving at speeds or moving at, you know, in ways that we can't, that our stuff doesn't do that, that doesn't obey the laws of physics. But see, we also have the ability, you know, like our military, our, like, we know, I mean, commercially, we have the ability to make it seem like things are there and things are moving around. They have concerts with holograms, you know, so it's not like a stretch to think that even our military, our military is like, hey, let's. Let's project something here, have it move in a certain way, and see how these pilots react, because they may want to do that in the future against somebody else, you know? And so all of this stuff, and to your point, it's like, it's in the government's interest to kind of egg on, like, oh, yeah, we don't know. It's gonna be kind of crazy, isn't it? Because if they're testing out stuff just like it was, you know, in the past. They're better off saying, oh, no, that's our new high tech. Something like that. No, they're not better off saying like this. Revealing what they're practicing or what they're trying.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: Well, they admitted that they did that in the fifties. I mean, that. That's what I'm saying.
[00:12:00] Speaker A: Subsequent. They didn't at the time.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: And so that always seems like the most reasonable kind of response here or the most reasonable thing for the things they're describing. Like, oh, it was moving around like this, and it appeared 60 miles away, and it's like, okay, yeah, that sounds like, I mean, I know we could, they could probably, if they could do Tupac concerts or performances, I'm pretty sure they can make stuff appear like it's there in the sky.
[00:12:26] Speaker B: Maybe Tupac got abducted by an alien. Maybe that's what happened. But let's start a whole different show. But no, but there was, I mean, look, this has been well documented for folks that, you know, want to look into it, right? Like you said, that they declassified a lot of material in the last 20 years from the 1950s eradic. And, you know, it shows openly that when people began to spot, especially in the southwest United States, where they have, like, area 51 and bases where they test this stuff, that instead of acknowledging like, yeah, we're the middle of the Cold War and we're trying to beat the Soviets, and we're testing a bunch of stuff out, they would say, oh, you guys think it's aliens? Well, of course it's aliens.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: You know, they wouldn't say that.
[00:13:06] Speaker B: But they're saying is they didn't, they didn't, they didn't have actively say, no, it's not right. Like, they let that stuff play out. And they had actually a classified research project called Project Blue Book during the fifties and into the sixties, actually took the CIA, NSA, and the Defense Department all worked together in coordination trying to actually really figure out, is there alien life? Can we find any first? And do we have any evidence that life, alien life, actually ever came to Earth? And they answered after all those years of checking it out, was, no, at.
[00:13:44] Speaker A: Least, but that's, they told us, but space is so remote, though. Like, even without that. And whether they could be lying there. But just the spade. There's so much out there, and everything is so far apart. It's just that that's like, again, if something has the technology to get here, they're probably not using propulsion. You know, they're probably doing exactly.
We're not familiar with and or that we're not, we don't know about yet. And if they're doing all that, they're probably not just going to crash, you know, like, they're like, oh, or they're.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: Like us looking at an ant colony. Like they're able to observe us right here, right now without us realizing that we're being observed. Like, that's what I mean. Like, I think you're right. Like, if something obviously from our understanding of the laws of physics, and I think that they said, like, I think the Andromeda galaxy is, is the closest galaxy and, but I mean, even if.
[00:14:33] Speaker A: You, like, just in the Milky Way, you know, the 400 billion stars, but it's a hundred light years across.
[00:14:38] Speaker B: No, but that's what I'm saying. So the idea that none of Einstein's theories have been proven, like, wrong yet. So until someone literally proves that the speed of light is not the speed limit of the universe, then to your point, it would take a minimum of a few hundred years at the speed of light to get to other areas outside of our solar system that could be habitable.
[00:14:59] Speaker A: So it's that point, by the way, just real quick. And then one of the pieces we'll share was a timepiece. And I know both of us have cited from it the, our first, like, for somebody to know that we're here because we got all these radio waves we're putting out, radio, television. 128 years is how far our radio waves have only gone out. 128 light years. And we're talking about thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousand light years. Things are away. So, like, it's these distances that make it very remote possible make a very remote possibility. And so if you're going to come with something with a remote possibility, then, you know, like, you need more than, oh, we just couldn't understand that. Or it was doing stuff that kind of you, if you think about it hard enough, you say, oh, I could see how we probably have, we right now have the capability to do stuff like that, whether it be in actuality or in appearance. From that standpoint, one of the things you mentioned offline, I want to get your thought on just real quick before we move to the next part, was your talk about how even intra inch inside the government, it is a effective way to keep classified stuff, very sensitive stuff, away from people who, you know, like or don't want it or shouldn't be seeing it, or you don't just want people asking too many questions, is to have them look into UFO stuff and have them go send people on wild goose chases, if you don't want them finding the real cheese, have them going and looking for stuff that, you know, that, like, oh, yeah, there's this and that. And so did you have any, like, I know you mentioned that to me just as far as, like, you know, like, that's also something here. Like, people outside the government could think that they're on a UFO chase, but really, again, they're just chasing their tail because the cheese is hidden. The real stuff that they're not supposed to find out is somewhere else.
[00:16:35] Speaker B: Yeah. All that makes sense. It could be us having, you know, really advanced technologies, or it could be our adversaries, right? The Chinese or someone like that that has something real advanced, and we don't want people to know that they have something that might actually be intimidating for us. So it could be either. But I do think that's why I would lean on the idea of deflection or delusion when we go into the next section of this discussion as really probably more culprits, then, like, we're talking about then actually living beings coming from some, you know, really far out dimensions or multiverse or another, you know, thing. And just like you're saying physically crash landing here where we can find it and see it and all that. Because, again, we're projecting our own experience because we can crash land somewhere, right? We have planes that crash. And so we assume, who knows if. If there are any living beings advanced enough to travel in this way through the universe, that they even would physically come here. Like, this could be a whole day. They could be working on energy and mental stuff that they just, you know, they're just thinking about, you know, stuff, and they can show up.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: That's how we think, though, man. That's what somebody's out there. They would come see us. That's the same thing of everything.
[00:17:49] Speaker B: It's like assuming that bats and sharks and dolphins would have the same experiential thing of the world that we do, but they don't because we know that they operate on things like sonar and electrical pulses, so they have a whole different way of receiving the earth and information than we do. And both of us probably can't fathom how the other thinks. And it's interesting. And one last thing before we jump one of these things, I thought, I've seen this a lot. I didn't know until researching this was fun. But, you know, Jimmy Carter had an official UFO sighting in, like, 1965 or 68 or something. I was reading, and when he reported it to the government, when he was, I guess, in the government, as I saw this, they did a five year investigation and concluded that he saw Venus, the planet Venus. And they were talking about how often Venus is confused with the UFO, I guess, because it's so bright. And then other things, like clouds hit.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: It a certain way. Like, it's just, it's bright and it's close.
[00:18:49] Speaker B: Correct. And then others were like, how radar, just radar blips and things can be caused by weather patterns and other just things out there. Debris, they said most of the stuff that they find are either end up being actual government, you know, military tests and aircraft, or they just said, like, chemical companies that have debris just floating in the air, like, like these balloons. I mean, things just kind of do float. I mean, we've all kind of let go of a helium balloon and watch how far it can go. So imagine something that might not be such thin plastic and have some sort of, you know, a gas in it that can rise. I mean, those things can fly around for a few years and to kind.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: Of wrap that up, basically. And, I mean, what. Because I want to ask you about, you know, the particular, quote, unquote whistleblower also, and just, you know, the scrutiny he's gotten. But the point being here is just that it's not to say that what's being said is impossible. It's just that there are so many more things or so many things that are more plausible than what's being presented. And what's being presented isn't being presented with a lot of evidence. It's being presented saying, hey, this is what this is. So and so said secondhand knowledge, things like that. There aren't many, there aren't eyewitnesses that have tangible, like, hey, this is what I saw. Put our hands on it. This, like that. So because of that, it's like, okay, well, we can't leap to one of the more implausible reason or things based on this, what we've seen so far. Not to say it's still possible, but it's just, there's a, it's a big leap versus a lot of other things that we know about that are. Oh, yeah, that, that could be, that. That could be that as well. So those aren't as exciting, though, as Uaps. But do you think the, the scrutiny on, on grush, you know, the, the, quote unquote whistleblower here, you know, he's gotten a lot of scrutiny. People like, oh, this guy's been saying this, this guy's been saying that some people like, oh, are they trying to discredit him? So you think that scrutiny has been warranted or you think it's like a shoot the messenger kind of thing?
[00:20:45] Speaker B: No, I think it's warm. And look, you come out talking about this kind of stuff, I mean, clearly people are going to scrutinize you. So I think it's warranted. Now, I don't think that people, I mean, like in any, any type of scenario like this, right? I don't think anyone should unfairly shoot a messenger. But I would say as I, as my follow up to that comment, that, and they're doing my research for today and reading things. I mean, there are some questional, questionable things about how he's presented this. I think, you know, we even talked about it, right? Like after he talks about the biological recoveries and all that. I'll quote here, when one of his quotes is the assessment of people with direct knowledge on the program I talked to.
[00:21:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: So everything that he is saying is hearsay secondhand.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:31] Speaker B: And so to your point, right. It's like, okay, so how come he didn't. Wasn't able to convince somebody who saw it to drag them in too, and say, look, you know, I want to go in front of Congress and say, because just like, like the congressional hearings about January 6, right. People came in not with hearsay. They came in with, I saw this. I was involved with that, so and so.
[00:21:53] Speaker A: I was in the room when this.
[00:21:54] Speaker B: Person said this, so and so said this to me. It's specifically all that. And I think, you know, and I just bring that up because it's to my mind. But any other investigation we've ever seen, especially something serious like this, like saying UFO's exist and all that, you're trying.
[00:22:06] Speaker A: To prove something that's largely hidden from public view, you know, and you gotta.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: Come with a little bit more credibility than just, I heard these people say that, but yet I can't get any of them to show up. And I can't also show you any evidence, meaning there's no photogram. And that's one of the things that a lot of the sciences tip. Sorry. Scientists that I read who are commenting on this were just saying, you know, like, until there's evidence, then we can't, like, scrutinize. Yeah, like, there's no photographs, there's no materials. And then one of them said, she made a good point. She goes, if someone just brought any material to our labs, we would be able to determine within a few minutes if this is a natural element from space, or if it's not biological, if some being would have put stuff together, and it's kind of like, yeah, you can just look at the table of elements and say, okay, steel rebar is not naturally occurring. It's an amalgamation of other elements and atoms that are put together, you know, through the combination of that, so they could tell if something actually exists, naturally or not, in space. But I guess no one. He wasn't able to get anyone to give him some debris.
[00:23:18] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, and I think the scrutiny is fair, as you pointed out. Like, when you. When you make exceptional claims, then there's going to be scrutiny. There are, I'm sure, people out there that are trying to discredit, like, they don't either, like what's being said or they, you know, it's offensive or something to come with such a. Such a light pack of evidence, so to speak, or, you know, kind of absent evidence. People that like, oh, well, you know, so that. I think there are some people that have gone probably far to try to discredit the guy, but that that happens, too. Like, if you. If you're stepping up to the front and say, I'm gonna change the way everybody looks at things, you want to make sure you're a good messenger. You know, a lot of times, like a lot of people know, there are a lot of people know, a lot of people don't know. But Rosa Parks wasn't the first person that ever got tried to. They moved to the back of the bus and they refused and got arrested for that. But she was deemed by the people who were trying to change society by trying to make a statement. She was deemed to be a good messenger, so to speak, to be someone that was harder to discredit, harder to say, oh, well, this person, you know what I, of course, say, you know, like, we're not going to have sympathy with this person or something.
[00:24:17] Speaker B: Remember, we're in the state of Florida. Sir, you're not supposed to be talking this way. You know, don't go on taint. Right.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: That's taking a risk. Taking a risk get us in trouble.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: Now the government's going to come get us. But here's the thing.
[00:24:26] Speaker A: Let me say this. Rush does believe what he's saying. I don't think that he's out here trying to be deceitful. I mean, some people, it's. There they are. It's easier for them to believe things with less evidence than others, you know? But to your point, the people that we really look to from a scientific standpoint, and to withstand scrutiny from a scientific standpoint, the people who we look at to do that kind of stuff, he's just not one of those people. Like, he's coming in. Like, everybody's throwing their hands up, like, well, everything he said, we can't even really do anything with, like, because none of this stuff is verifiable. You know, it's like, all right, well, so are you just wasting everybody's time? And if he says he has information, if this spurs more people to look or spurs. Spurs more information to come out, then great. But otherwise, I mean, you know, he. Yeah, he believes what he sees. And. And the thing we always got to be careful with is that human beings also, this is another human aspect. We center ourselves on things, but the other thing we do is we see. We see stars, we see constellations, we see clouds, we see forms in the clouds with meaning and stuff like that. So we tend to think when there is disorder in what we're seeing, we tend to ascribe an order to that. So that also is one of these things here where people are good at subconsciously putting all these pieces together to make a puzzle piece that it's like, oh, well, actually, the stars weren't arranged like that. For us to put Orion. Put a belt on Orion, you know, like. Or for us to look at Orion, you know, like, that's just. That's the concept.
[00:25:48] Speaker B: What about that piece of toast that had Jesus's face when we were kids in the 80s? That lady, that toast and, you know, of course. Of course now, man, it's fascinating. So here's what I think. Part of me, as I. As I researched this and got more into it, I will. I'm not going to pick on the guy, grush, but I will get back into a little bit of maybe the background. He started reminding me that he could be a little bit of. More of a Michael Flynn type of. Because one thing. And, look, I respect the guy's service. I said he was highly decorated in the air force. He served in Afghanistan before then moving on to the geospatial, you know, kind of. I think it's a division of NASA or something like that when they looking at all this stuff. So that's why I started thinking of Michael Flynn, because I thought, okay, Michael Flynn was a genuinely decorated three star general that was one of the top guys in counterterrorism over that era, like 1520 years ago.
But clearly, just because he was great at one thing, you know, he still went off the deep end with his QAnon stuff on the other end. Right? So people that are great at one thing aren't necessarily immune from delusions and just going sideways in other parts of their life. And so one of the things that I found in researching today is, in a quote, a little bit from an article that rush has been working alongside a network of government adjacent UFO believers. And when they say government adjacent, what I mean are people that have been in and out of government in recent years. And it says, and they named someone else who was, who used to be in government. It says, quote, you might have seen some of them on cable UFO shows, like the secret of Skinwalker Ranch, in which a former Pentagon UFO analyst who served on the task force that helped write the government's 2021 UFO report now leads a reality tv crew hunting harmful, disembodied quantum hitchhiker entities, one of which, he claims, attached itself to him. So my point is, is that we know that we've had, you know, a lot of interesting people in the last five, seven years in government that were brought in, and a lot of these people believe different things. Like I said, Michael Flynn was an advisor to the former president, and we've learned that he believes a lot of things that are pretty out there. So what I'm saying is to see that these are the type of people that grush is associating with people that are literally saying that there's hitchhiker disembodied quantum entities. And one attached himself to the guy. You know, that raises my eyebrow to say, okay, who's this guy really around? And then the other thing I found interesting was on June 5 of 23, it looks like this was first brought to the New York Times, Politico, and the Washington Post that gross and his guys want. And after several weeks of researching it, all of these major media publications is denied to report it. And so that told me, goes back to something we talked recently about, the idea of journalism, that when people went deep and started vetting this stuff, I mean, one of two things either happened, there was no story really there of credibility, or they did get the phone call from the top of the government and said, hey, you ain't reporting this. So it is going to be one.
[00:28:57] Speaker A: House committee didn't get that phone call.
[00:28:59] Speaker B: Correct. And that was what I was getting into is this, to me, looks like something we've seen from this current Congress, which is an inability to really vet certain witnesses that they've invited up for certain conversations. And a lot of it has been. This is the first one that I would say doesn't appear to be politically motivated in a certain way, but it still feels like they brought a guy up just to talk about a lot of stuff that doesn't, like we're saying already doesn't have much credible evidence. It sounds, it's all hearsay. Sounds interesting, but I don't really know where it's all going from here.
[00:29:38] Speaker A: Well, that's the problem, I think. And like I said, I think that the folks that are out here saying this stuff believe what they're saying. But the problem is, is that we'll where, like, unless this is going to spur other people with evidence to come forward, it's just like, well, we can't really do anything else with what he's given us because we can't, he's saying, oh, where's the source in here? I can't give you that. It's classified. Like, and it's like, okay, well, then we either take your word for it or not, but there's not more stuff we can do. And I mean, the thing I'll say, though, is that, and this is, again, another one of these human mind things is to keep in mind that this is, this is why I think that they, they believe the people who are saying this stuff, I believe they believe what they're saying is that, remember, to a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
[00:30:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:19] Speaker A: You know, and so when you immerse yourself in this stuff, it will start looking more and more real to you, you know, and you, your standard for what it will take to make you believe it will go down.
[00:30:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:30] Speaker A: You'll lower that. And that's not sinister necessarily, but that's just like, hey, I mean, I've been looking at this two years straight. So at this point, you know what I'm, what might have been skeptical, you know, about before now. It's kind of like, oh, I've been, I've seen it so much that it's like, it's not that skeptical or I'm not skeptical of it anymore. So I don't know.
[00:30:46] Speaker B: That's a great point. I think that's a great point.
[00:30:49] Speaker A: Thanks. Yeah, no, I think it's good to not rule out this stuff, but it's kind of like, well, what tangibly can we do with this now? Is it, are you just saying, here, take my word for it, or are you giving us stuff where we can then pick up and then try to, one thing that happens with the scientific method is that you show your work and then other people can try that work, too. And see if they came up with the same answer, you know, and so it left a hole there for that.
[00:31:08] Speaker B: It's a great observation because it hits on something that is, that is kind of cultural as well, which is, you know, clearly we have a culture of distrust of the government and the idea of things like the deep state and all that. And I think, yeah, the inability for the government itself to be able to come one way or another really prove that they don't exist or kind of show us a flying saucer they found, you know, 40 years ago and say, look, we've been studying this thing continues to keep this, this void open.
[00:31:36] Speaker A: Well, but that's not how science works, though. Science, science doesn't work like that, but it doesn't exist. You know, people will fill those voids.
[00:31:43] Speaker B: With these kind of conspiracy theories delude, like you said.
[00:31:47] Speaker A: So someone like you pointed out, once our technology gets to the point where our imaginations can start taking it from there.
[00:31:53] Speaker B: So, yeah, so, but I think we.
[00:31:55] Speaker A: Can move to the next topic from there. The second topic we wanted to discuss today is from a geopolitical standpoint, a bit more like serious.
It's on the other side of the world, but it's definitely something that we look at as a country, a rule of law country here in the United States.
Just what's happening in Israel and what's happened essentially is the parliament is attempting to push through judicial reform that reduces the power of the judiciary branch of government that they have, either makes it more subservient to the parliament or lets the parliament overrule it or just different things. And so there have been a couple of planks they've been working on as far as the reform goes. And they've got one through. Basically, the one they got through was it curtails the Supreme Court, the Israel Supreme Court ability to use what's called a reasonable standardist when reviewing government decisions.
The ones they didn't get through, at least yet, is they wanted to make the appointment of Supreme Court judges something that the politicians did. And then they also wanted to allow the parliament to be able to override judicial decisions. So those haven't come through yet, but the efforts are presumably going to continue to try to do that, those additional reforms as well. So what stands out to you, tunde, you know, in this judicial overhaul that's being pushed through in Israel, which is, you know, holds itself out and is, you know, and the significant part, at least a democratic nation?
[00:33:20] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a couple of things.
The first we'll get into over this conversation. And the second is pretty straightforward. So the first is, you know, in preparing for today, I mean, just the level of complexities within the nation of Israel itself, I just find, like, it's, it's, it's fascinating on one hand and definitely a minefield in terms of a verbal minefield that we'll wade into in a discussion because there's a lot going on here which, which the, for why these, these what, where are their motivations coming from? And there seems to be a lot of interesting bedfellows and kind of enemy of my enemies, my friends within a lot of this stuff going on inside the israeli government, as well as, I think, the culture around the israeli discussion. So that's something I think we'll hash out in the conversation. But the second thing which is straightforward is Israel doesn't have a constitution.
So that stood out to me when I'm preparing for this and all that. I mean, that's one of the things that stuck out is because they don't have this kind of skeletal framework of the system and how, like, hard and.
[00:34:31] Speaker A: Fast rules, like you said, like it. Everybody knows these. This is what, this is what it is.
[00:34:35] Speaker B: Yeah. Like our constitution like that. Again, it made me appreciate the system that we're in as much as, as Americans. We continue to complain about ourselves and our government, everything else. Again, what a beautiful system that was created in this country where I, at least certain things like the separation of powers between the judiciary, the executive and the congressional branches is spelled out for us in the constitution. And, of course, we do argue the nuances and all that. And everybody's always jockeying, like you always say, it's all about who wants it more in the moment.
[00:35:08] Speaker A: In the moment. And the, the relative power of our branches of government have kind of ebbed and flowed over the years.
[00:35:13] Speaker B: You know, but at least we have something that can go back to, because that's really what I realized is the ability for this to happen is because there is no backbone framework in Israel like that. So, and the other thing, too, which I think we got to be fair and not compare our two systems at all in this way, is we're a constituent democratic constitutional republic. They're a parliamentary system. So it's a much different, like, there's just too much different, very different systems.
[00:35:38] Speaker A: I mean, you know, there's different ways of enacting a democratic type of, you know, will of the people type of thing. For sure. There, one is one approach, and one is like a completely different approach. So that's a good point.
[00:35:49] Speaker B: So that's why those are the things that stood out to me.
[00:35:51] Speaker A: Well, to me, I look at it, and yes, there is a lot of nuance in terms of the state, Israel, and the circumstances it's in and the things it does and everything like that. But to me, where it's most instructive from someone sitting here in the United States is just, you look at the operations and the temptations of power. You know, how power operates in a system, particularly when power is trying to expand on itself, when power is trying to grow its own power. And so I think the constitution point was a really interesting point, and that was one of the things I noted was the lack of constitution. But the separation of powers piece, I think may get underplayed here a little bit because, and not just separation of powers, you know, like in our country, like separation of powers as the constitutional concept, where we have three branches of government, a judicial, a legislative and executive branch, and those, each of those can check on each other. We have checks on each other. So you have that, that interreliance of three different branches, but then also separation of powers more in an abstract way, the federalism system, the fact that we have the dual sovereignty of the federal government and then all 50 state governments that are, that have their own ability to do laws and stuff like that. And so we've seen, like, just for power grabs in this country, it's just, it's harder because you gotta have more people on board with what you're trying, the power you're trying to grab, because it's not just, I can take over to federal government or one or two branches of the federal government, and I can just wipe everything else out because you still got a lot of state governments that can do stuff, too. They have laws they can enforce. They have courts that they have, they have, you know, they had all this other stuff. So that kind of complexity, which makes it convoluted, makes it hard for, to actually get things done a lot of times, which is the part we see is like, oh, it's hard for us to enact change. It's hard for it. But that kind of redundancy makes it also hard for power to grab more power. And so, but to me, yeah, looking at this and saying, okay, yeah, it's interesting that what they're attacking is that separation of powers concept where they, the parliament and that aspect of the government is trying to encroach upon what the government, what the judicial can do, particularly. How well can the judicial check the parliament? You know, so it's like, okay, yeah, that's so one way that a powerful body in a state would try to grow its power would be looking at who can check it and say, hey, let's. Let's subvert, let's undermine their ability to check us, let's low it, lessen their power relative to us, and then we can advance forward with more power.
[00:38:20] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's fascinating. And then, and then getting into it further, I mean, this is where I go now to get into more of the nuances. I mean, look, Israel's very existence is a complexity, because I've had this joke that the Europeans were so anti semitic that after the Holocaust, they couldn't find any land in Europe for european Jews. They actually had to kick them all the way out of the continent, put them in the Middle east, and there.
[00:38:46] Speaker A: Were people there already.
[00:38:47] Speaker B: That's my point. And so it naturally created a conflict because you had the palestinian land already there with palestinian people there and Arabs and people that were considered their homeland. So, and unlike, you know, other times when we've seen one culture kind of go into a space where there's another culture already there, like, whether, you know, the Europeans coming to the Americas or, yes, you know, the British going to Australia and dealing with the Aborigines, this was done more, you know, kind of United nations and kind of more in that in a slow way. It wasn't just one group going in and just decimating another group. So it was kind of done in this way. Okay, you guys gotta coexist. And clearly, there has been tension since the founding of Israel. Right.
[00:39:35] Speaker A: That's kind of an understatement.
[00:39:36] Speaker B: So. Correct. I'm just being. That's what I mean. This is a very nuanced topic. Right. And so the idea that now, and that's why I say, just as I'm reading here, first I came into it more thinking that, okay, is this, I've been hearing that Netanyahu, the prior, the current prime minister, he's been under this investigation for fraud and bribery and kind of similar to former President Trump here. Is this more about him saving his own skin and all that? And there's a part of it that I still think. I'm sure the timing here seems like it is, but we can get in that in a minute. But then there was another part where I started seeing a lot going on as relates to Saudi Arabia, Iran, the kind of the greater nation state stuff that we would expect in geopolitics, feeling threatened by Saudi Arabia's growing influence and their pivot towards China and the idea that Saudi Arabia may be giving Israel behind the scenes, the green light to annex, literally, the palestinian areas and finally be done with this whole thing in exchange for whatever concessions the Israelis will give the Saudis. And that's where I started thinking about strange bedfellows, because similar to our president here, I thought, well, Netanyahu never really had, I mean, he's always been an aggressive guy, but he never was really that right wing in terms of the right wing culture in israeli politics.
He's been very aggressive as a nationalist, but not culturally right wing. And the fact that is, again, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. He's been giving concessions to the extreme right wing within the government of, or the parliament of and coalition of the israeli government and politicians. And I feel like that's where it's like, well, President Trump culturally was always a New York Democrat who was pro choice and didn't mind gays, but now he's aligned himself with QAnon because he's in trouble and he needs allies, right? And I feel like, I think that's a little bit what I'm seeing with Netanyahu. And that's very interesting because it's not just about his own personal legal trouble, but by aligning himself with the really hard right of israeli politics, he stands to really, this stands to really change the Middle east. Because one of the things I read that seemed very, you know, fairly credible was that by weakening the judiciary, if they decide to really go hard into Palestine, I'm talking really annex it, going with the military, all that, that they are free from the Supreme Court and the legal ramifications that could come to the politicians that did that, because that could be considered a war crime or against international rule, and then they would at least be insulated in their own country. And then if a big player in the region, like Saudi Arabia, gives them the green light and makes everybody else in the region look the other way, you know, that that's what I thought about at the big level. I was like, man, this could be a big game being played that's bigger than what it looks on the surface right now.
[00:42:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well, but that's when you get into the behind the scenes stuff. I mean, that's geopolitics, you know? I mean, it's rarely, there's rarely just the guy out there like it does. It happens from time to time, but there is rarely just the guy out there just doing stuff off the top of his head, you know, for no reason, you know, or just because.
[00:42:54] Speaker B: No, that's why I started thinking this is big. I went into this research thinking that, oh, this is about just Netanyahu trying to save his skin on his own stuff. But then I thought, well, but part.
[00:43:03] Speaker A: Of it, though, also though part of it could be, though, that as his troubles began to grow, then the coalition that he looked to align with, that's my point.
[00:43:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:16] Speaker A: He would look to an align with a coalition that already kind of had this in mind, and it was like, oh, well, this kind of, kind of suits me better now. So let me align. And that's, you know, the coalition, the ruling coalition there now has been called the furthest right wing government, the furthest to the right wing that any government Israel's ever had. But if you look at it just from the standpoint of, okay, like the, the elected officials, which I think the ruling coalition now has about, or got about 48% of the vote. So it's almost half, but it's not, it's not more than half. But in any event, they are looking to push this stuff through again. When this came up earlier this year, we saw mass demonstrations. And then it's coming up now, and we're seeing the demonstrations, we're seeing strikes, we're seeing the public has reacted in a very notable way with a very activist bent. And so does that something to see that a lot of times when we see, we see protests in this country, you know, like we see mass protests in this country. Three years ago, we had mass protests in the summer, you know, over the George Floyd stuff and, you know, just, you know, the race and policing and things like that. And, you know, so does this kind of thing. And another, seeing this in another country, you know, the mass, mass demonstrations, the protests and so forth, is that something that encourages you to see, you know, just people being able to try to exert power, you know, just through the process, through a nonviolent kind of showing the force of population? Or is it more discouraging? Like, oh, well, they're doing all this and the march is still happening as far as what they're protesting against.
[00:44:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that's, I'm neutral on answering that doesn't give me positive or negatives. I mean, I think, look, we saw last year the protests in China over the COVID rules. I mean, I think anytime a population is pushed to a certain level, they can get out in the street. And obviously, in a democracy like Israel, we don't expect to see.
[00:45:10] Speaker A: I don't think that's a given, man.
[00:45:12] Speaker B: I was just gonna say in a democracy like Israel, we don't expect to see them getting mowed down in the street like we would in Sudan or Afghanistan if people went out in the street like that. I mean, so I think, I'm not surprised to see this type of emotional energy being played out this way in a country like Israel. Like, I think just like we've seen recent protests in France, I think that's to be expected in a western style democracy when a large chunk of the population is unhappy.
But I do think that, you know, look, I think it's good that from a democratic standpoint, right, that people are able to do this just like in our country, freedom of assembly, freedom to redress, you know, your grievances with the government and all that in public, freedom of the press to report on it and all that.
[00:45:55] Speaker A: So that, but see to your point earlier, those are constitutionally granted rights. And so the fact that this is happening right now while a portion of the government is trying to consolidate power.
[00:46:05] Speaker B: No, that's a risk. You're right.
[00:46:07] Speaker A: That's what I'm saying. Like, the risk is that this is happening in France.
[00:46:11] Speaker B: Yeah. No, the risk is that the politicians, you know, get their way and they can immediately create laws that don't allow people to do this in the future and the judiciary won't be able to help the population and rule against it. So I totally see this as a slippery slope down to maybe some of the central european models of this quasi democracy slash dictatorship. You know, places like Hungary or Belarus or Russia where you have the same leaders in there for 25, 30 years, you know, generations. And I think it's interesting how, you know, Netanyahu seems to have that type of personality where he's the longest serving leader in Israel. I mean, he's been dancing between prime minister and president, but it's been like 20, almost 25 years, I think, of him, and some sort of high up leadership and power. And again, you know, besides our last president, we're used to having leaders in our country who serve their time, and then they're done and they're, and they're happy to be done.
[00:47:11] Speaker A: Meaning they recognize, they accept being done.
[00:47:14] Speaker B: No, I just mean they, yeah, I'm.
[00:47:16] Speaker A: Sure, like George Hw Bush wasn't happy to be.
[00:47:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm sure he did. Wasn't happy. He lost.
[00:47:20] Speaker A: Gore wasn't happy.
[00:47:21] Speaker B: But they recognized that, that the system in this country is bigger than them individually, and they are happy, at least to be a part of being a cog in that wheel of leadership. And that someone else is going to be handed this baton. And I think that Netanyahu has always struck me as a guy that maybe doesn't have that at his core, that he does want to just stay in power. And I think just like we've talked about the fact that he has so many legal issues. And again, it's not exact mirror, but it's a similar look at our former President Trump here, where once you have these kind of legal problems, it's almost better to just keep fighting and stay in the limelight because, you know, you'll, you'll have a portion of the population that's always going to support you and you get to tell your case. And it's harder, I guess, for, you know, people that are trying to have you, you know, held accountable.
[00:48:13] Speaker A: Yeah. When you're in power. Definitely.
[00:48:15] Speaker B: Yeah. To do it as easily. So, you know, that's why I say it struck me as all that first. But I think reading into it, I see some bigger stuff. And that's where I could see the strange bedfellows and all that, where he hooks up with the right wing and they look at him and say, hey, dude, we got now the same issue. We got to get rid of this judiciary overrule, ability to overrule the political side. You want to change it for your own skin. We want to change it because of plans we've always had to deal with the Palestinians and all that. And now, you know, we can, we can tie this up.
[00:48:47] Speaker A: No, no, no. I mean, and to me, though, the pro, the protest part is interesting because the, if you read kind of about what the protests, what they're saying, what they're trying to do, it seems like there's a large number of people in Israel, a large percentage of people in Israel that looks at this stuff as like an existence existential threat. Like they're talking, there's maybe a hundreds of thousands of people out there. There's tens of thousands, maybe 100,000 people out there. Israel only has, you know, over 9 million people in it. That's not 330 million. And you got, you know, 100,000 in the streets, you know. And so to me, that the population is looking at this stuff with such a, in such a serious way actually makes me look at it and say, okay, there is more that going on here. Like, whether it's, whether it's a feel thing, because a lot of times, you know, you have populations that kind of, they sense an energy as far as the direction that their country is going or whatever, but this, like the people are in the streets. Like, this is like, it's about sustained.
[00:49:48] Speaker B: Like, yeah, like, that's what I'm saying. Since January, like every week it's.
[00:49:51] Speaker A: Yes, like they're out there. Like, like things are going down the tubes is kind of like the way that they're, they're approaching this. And so to me, it's like, okay, wow, like you, like what you threw out and what you've kind of, you know, what you've seen uncovered in kind of, you know, what I'm more of the deeper writings as far as what the speculation may be, as far as the behind the scenes would explain more of that. Because when you're talking about just the level of, okay, you know, we're making this change, making that change, the level of distrust that the population must have, that this is what, like, this sustained type of energy. And then actually what they're at, what's actually being done to me is there's something like, this isn't going to just happen. And then, oh, like, oh, well, everybody just moves on. This seems to be going to a point where, like you said, something significant is going to happen and then people are going to, they're going to either get used to a new normal or Netanyahu might overplay his hand, but there seems to be, there seems to be something building here as well, for sure.
[00:50:50] Speaker B: I think the biggest thing that, that speaks to that, that I saw in red in my preparation for today was the amount of military reservists that are saying they're not going to serve if that's huge, because apparently 60% to 70% of all of Israel's military operations rely on reservists, unlike our country, that has a much larger population of career soldier soldiers. Sorry. Who actually are full time serving the.
[00:51:19] Speaker A: Military, which is very significant. But then you got doctors doing. They're going to do it. Doctors are going to do it one day straight. It's like, whoa.
[00:51:26] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and that's what, and that's what I realized because Israel is one of the few countries that literally is surrounded by enemies, quote unquote, and is extremely well respected, you know, in terms of its military, is one of the most respected in the world, and that's what keeps it safe. I mean, there's a truth to that. So if you really see a fracturing within the country where a large percentage of military reservists don't want to participate whenever they're called up, this is how you see a country break down for real, because then they are vulnerable for being attacked by somebody. And, you know, we obviously, as the United States, at least in the current relationship, would step in there. But I mean, this, things like that could get ugly very quickly.
[00:52:06] Speaker A: But it's significant. Even if you don't go to that extent, it's still very, like, it reflects a energy, a concern that the population at large is feeling, you know, and that they're. And like, yeah. Cause that, that's not something that you do flippantly. That's like, oh, okay, yeah, it's Saturday. I'll come out here, walk around, march for a little bit, and then I just go back to my life, you know, like it. And so to me, that's really what stands out about that, is that they, the people on the inside are looking at this as a huge deal, and there would seem to be willing to lay a lot on the line about this. And so it's something to keep an eye on for that reason, because, yeah, it could play out like you said, you know, it could play out in other ways, too, though. And so that's kind of, that's the unpredictability of the world, you know, as you've seen it since we really pretty much recorded history began. So I think we can wrap from there. We appreciate it. Right. For joining us on this episode of call. Like I see it. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think. Send it to a friend. Until next time, I'm James Keys tune.
[00:53:03] Speaker B: To egg on Lana.
[00:53:03] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
