 This is the Humanist Report with Mike Bigaredo. The Humanist Report podcast is funded by viewers like you, through Patreon and PayPal. To support the show, visit patreon.com forward slash humanistreport or become a member at humanistreport.com. Now enjoy the show. Welcome to the Humanist Report podcast. My name is Mike Bigaredo and this is episode 306 of the program. Today is Friday, September 30th and before we get started I want to take some time to thank all of the people who make this show possible. All of our newest Patreon, PayPal and YouTube members, all of which either signed up for the very first time to support us this week or increased the monthly pledge that they were already giving to us. And that includes, So thank you so much to all of these kind souls. If you would also like to support the show, I would greatly appreciate it. You can do so by going to humanistreport.com slash support patreon.com forward slash humanistreport or by clicking join underneath any one of our YouTube videos. So this week we have an absolutely ginormous episode for you. I will be off next week, which means you are going to see some extra video segments, all of which I will use to feed the YouTube algorithm while I'm taking a break. So here's what we've got. We're going to head against Texas's abortion ban by Satanists and memers. How the Supreme Court could also allow bans on marriage equality to take effect. Unemployment runs out as the pandemic continues to rage on, we'll talk about that. A reformed neo-Nazi has a warning about people like Tucker Carlson. Eric Clapton releases a cringe-worthy anti-vax anthem, the squad protests and Bridges Line 3 pipeline and we'll look at a media matters compilation of all of the times Fox News has promoted Ivern Mectin as a COVID treatment. That's what we've got on the agenda for today's episode and a lot more. So let's waste no time and get right to it. I hope you enjoy what I have in store for you. So it's not like this news out of Texas is particularly surprising because I mean it's been a slow buildup to this moment for decades but it's still really difficult to grapple with the reality that in 2021 America we're going back to the medieval times when it comes to women's reproductive health. Like we're forcing women to get coat hanger abortions again. It's truly shocking and the people who are advocating for this, they think that they're the ones who are pro-life. This is going to kill women. How many women are going to die? Because they're forced to pursue illegal unsafe abortions. Like when you get rid of abortion, you don't actually get rid of abortions. You just convert legal and safe abortions into illegal unsafe abortions. So it's not pro-life at all and I really wish that liberals and leftists would stop calling anti-abortion people pro-life because they're not pro-life. This is actually a pro-death position and you know this is happening because the far right has captured the Supreme Court for a generation and rather than trying to have a legitimate conversation about stacking the Supreme Court or codifying Roe v. Wade into the Constitution, Democrats are basically saying, oh well shucks, this is really bad. Okay, what are you going to do about it? It's absolutely bad, but what are you going to do about it? Are you just going to allow this far right extremist Supreme Court to take us back to the medieval times? Or are you actually going to fucking fight? And right now Democrats say that they're going to fight, but not hard enough. But thankfully there are people pushing back in whatever ways that they possibly can and legally there's a number of things that is taking place, right? So the city of Portland will be voting on a trade and travel ban to Texas in protest of this. On top of that, you have the Department of Justice saying that they will quote unquote protect women who seek an abortion in Texas. And also, you know, you have the White House calling on Congress to pass Roe v. Wade codified into law and Nancy Pelosi says that she will do that. Unfortunately, it's not going to pass because Democrats won't get rid of the filibuster in the Senate, so it's not going to pass the Senate. And even if it passed in the Senate and Joe Biden signed Roe v. Wade into law or an abortion bill into law that overrode the state of Texas, the Supreme Court can still say that that law is unconstitutional. So it's not really a long-term solution. So this has to be challenged legally. And there's only two options here. You can either stack the Supreme Court or you can introduce a constitutional amendment to make abortion a right under the Constitution. Neither of those things, those things is likely to happen. So, you know, it's really frustrating to see this play out. This is barbaric, but this is just, you know, this is what happens when you let reactionaries capture the highest court in the land. But thankfully, there's a lot of folks in this country who are smart. They're savvy and they're using the evangelicals' own religious liberty arguments against them. For example, the Satanic Temple is doing just that. As Sanford Nolan of the San Antonio Current explains, the Satanic Temple has joined the legal wrangling to block or overturn Texas's severe new abortion law. That law, which the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block this week, bans the medical procedure after six weeks, including in cases of rape and incest. The Salem, Massachusetts-based temple filed a letter with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration arguing that its Texas members should have legal access to abortion pills. The group's attorneys contended that its status as a non-theistic religious organization should ensure access to abortion as a faith-based right. In the letter, the temple argues that abortion pills, misoprostol, and miphaprestazone should be available for its use through the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which protects Native Americans' use of peyote in religious rituals. The temple says those same rights should apply to the drugs it uses for its own rituals. Quote, I am sure Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who famously spends a good deal of his time composing press releases about religious liberty issues in other states, will be proud to see that Texas's robust religious liberty laws, which he so vociferously champions, will prevent future abortion rituals from being interrupted by superfluous government restrictions meant only to shame and harass those seeking an abortion, said Lucian Greaves, the temple spokesman and co-founder in an emailed statement. So that right there is brilliant, I think. I don't necessarily know that this legal challenge is going to pay off and be successful, but the fact that they're trying is truly commendable. Like, you know, if you want to argue that it's your religious liberty to impose an abortion ban on people in Texas, well, then it goes both ways. It's also religious liberty to allow for abortion, at least according to the standards by the Satanic Temple. I think this is brilliant, but another way that people are pushing back, grassroots activists online, I would argue, are pushing back, is by trolling the shit out of the Texas whistleblower hotline, which is basically a hotline to snitch on women who seek out an abortion. And as Sergeant Balls on Twitter points out, LOL Texas made a website to report women who violate the new abortion bill and you can attach pictures so all my free time today is spamming it with goat's and furry porn. It's funny because it seems like everyone on the Internet came to that same conclusion at the same time and the result was just beautiful. So as Salon reports, their snitch site, prolifewistleblower.com, was shared widely by abortion rights supporters and clever teens on Twitter, Reddit, and of course TikTok, calling on the Internet to rise up and render the tip line non-functional with spam. The calls to action caused a sensation. They quickly made it to Reddit's friend Page, drew thousands of retweets on Twitter, and probably most effectively mobilized the teens on TikTok. Almost immediately, prolifewistleblower.com was inundated with nearly countless false reports, hate mail, and because JNC is wonderful, Shrek memes, lots and lots of Shrek memes. Some say for work and others, not so much. And when they're referring to not-safe-for-work Shrek memes, let me be clear, they're talking about pictures of Shrek's dick. Green dick, green balls, that's what this hotline got. Now, additionally, there was one TikToker that actually created a script so individuals can flood the line themselves with lots and lots of false reports of women violating this abortion law. And I'm gonna play this video for you so you know what not to do in the state of Texas. So definitely don't do what this person is explaining to you very clearly. Take a look. Okay, so here's the update. Unfortunately, the IP banned me this morning. So when I access the site, it gives me something that looks like this. But before that, I was able to get about 245. And it's morning, about 48 more, so about 300. But then I started thinking, what if I made this a bit easier for everybody? So I made an iOS shortcut. You might be asking yourself, what does the iOS shortcut do? Well, it picks a random city, county, and Texas zip code, and all the other information, puts it in form, I might at least admit to. So if you go to the website from your iOS device, this is the webpage with the form, click the share button, you click the shortcut, it automatically send the form. It will then refresh the page and give you the option to do it again. It's in five seconds. If you're interested, I'll put a link in my bio and download the shortcut, allow some instruction on how to use the shortcut. And because it uses realistic information, it makes it harder for them to parse the data. Yeah, so definitely don't do that. Now there's a vice report by Joseph Cox, who kind of goes into greater detail about what this script does. They tested it themselves. So if you want to learn how to do this, and I think it's important that you learn how to do this, so you definitely don't do this, take a look at this article, I'll link to it down below. Now at the end of the day, realistically speaking, you know, flooding this lifeline or this hotline, I should say with memes. It's not necessarily going to accomplish much, but doesn't make me feel better. Absolutely, it makes me feel better knowing that these radicals, these extremists, these reactionaries are having to look at pornographic pictures of Shrek. It does bring a smile to my face, but at the end of the day, there needs to be a policy solution for this. And really, again, I want to stress that there's basically two options. You can introduce a constitutional amendment to make abortion a right constitutionally, so that way the Supreme Court can't do anything about this. And you saw this once and for all. Or you stack the Supreme Court. I mean, one-third of that court features Trump appointees, and they're going to be there for a fucking generation. So we can either allow these reactionary assholes to take us back to the medieval times, or we can fight for once. I would like for Democrats to go with the option B and fight, but I don't think that's going to be the case. So we have to apply as much pressure as we possibly can and make noise, because this is unacceptable. Like, this is going to kill women. How many women are going to die because they seek out an unsafe illegal abortion? It shouldn't happen in 2021 in a developed country. This shouldn't happen. It shouldn't even be something that we're considering. But here we are having to fight a ban on abortion in 2021 when this issue was settled or should have been settled. But yeah, I mean, it doesn't matter that only a minority of the country actually wants abortion banned. When you have control of the Supreme Court, you know, you can impose your will on the rest of society, regardless of how unpopular your policies are. So this is gross, but any way we can push back, I would encourage you to do that, because this can't stand. It just cannot stand. So I really feel like, or I should say, I really hope that the Supreme Court choosing to allow Texas to just explicitly violate Roe v. Wade serves as the wake-up call that a lot of Americans needed because having a far-right Supreme Court for a generation that has really, really negative implications for the future of America. It's not like Roe v. Wade is super-president and they're going to leave it alone because they know that it would be politically unpopular if they overturned Roe v. Wade. They don't care. This is a branch of government that is shielded from no elections, and that's part of the reason why the court is supposed to be more valuable because they don't make decisions based on what is or isn't popular. They just rule on the basis of what is and isn't constitutional. But that also insulates them from any threats of getting ousted from government. So they can do whatever. They can be as tyrannical as they want to be. And when you have a lot of activist judges, when you have a lot of ideologues on the court, things are going to get bad. And I hope that people know that remaining complacent and not fighting isn't an option anymore because things aren't just bad, but they're going to continue to get worse. And I don't think people truly are grappling with the reality of how bad this is. Like for them to undercut Roe v. Wade, like they're taking us back to medieval times and we can't just let this stand. We have to fight. We have to actually make noise about packing the Supreme Court or codifying Roe v. Wade into the U.S. Constitution. But I don't think people really understand what they need to do in order to fight. So, you know, they're just left feeling hopeless and they throw their hands up and think, well, everything else is bad. So I guess this is just another, you know, bad thing. But I want to read an article from LGBTQ Nation because John Gallagher makes a really good point about how bad this is for the Supreme Court to just like willingly let Texas violate Roe v. Wade. But on top of that, what to expect next in the immediate future if the Supreme Court continues on this trajectory, which all signs point to them continuing on this trajectory. So Gallagher writes, the five right-wing justices on the Supreme Court who decided to uphold Texas's anti-abortion law last week are sending a strong signal about the shaky future of LGBTQ rights, including marriage equality. Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas cleared the way for a new law in Texas which bans abortions after six weeks to take effect with just the single paragraph. The five justices clearly had an ideological goal in mind and they weren't about to let legal niceties such as a court hearing stand in the way. The justices used the request to use what is known as shadow docket, which they used to issue an expedited decision for emergency cases to settle this incredibly controversial case while holding no oral arguments. For conservatives, it was the equivalent of applying for college and being told without having to take any courses or pay tuition. By allowing the Texas law to take effect, the justices essentially threw out any regard for precedent overnight. Roe v. Wade, the 50-year-old Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion simply didn't matter. So ask yourself, is it really that implausible to believe that if they were willing to just willy-nilly disregard a 50-year president in Roe v. Wade, they wouldn't also disregard five six-year president with Obergefell and allow for states to start banning marriage equality again? It's not just possible. I'd argue it's likely and that's what John Gallagher is arguing in this article. He continues, guess what else conservatives would like to see overturned? Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court ruling that legalized marriage equality. The idea that the court would strip away this right so soon after bestowing it may sound far-fetched. Only commentators like to insist that the court would never do any such thing, except that Alito and Thomas have made it abundantly clear that they think Obergefell was wrongly decided. In a decision last year involving Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refused to give same-sex couples a marriage license, Thomas said so point-blank. Quote, by choosing to privilege a novel constitutional right over the religious liberty interests explicitly protected in the First Amendment and by doing so undemocratically, the court has created a problem that it can fix, wrote Thomas in an opinion joined by Alito. Until then, Obergefell will continue to have ruinous consequences for religious liberty. There's every reason to believe that Barrett with her ultra-conservative background in previous anti-LGBTQ history shares this sentiment. Indeed, the Federalist Society, the anti-LGBTQ group that Donald Trump outsourced judicial appointments to, has consistently claimed that Obergefell was wrongly decided. The group has promoted the idea that marriage equality is, as one of its writers put it, a legal and cultural mistake. The Federalist Society sets the litmus test for judicial appointees on the right. What it says isn't just an opinion. It's the template that its adherents are meant to follow. As they're ruling on Texas' abortion law shows, the five extremists on the court don't care about precedent, nor do they care about public opinion. More than half of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. They care about ideology. So what if most Americans think marriage equality is a good thing? If five justices think otherwise, that right could be gone in a flash. And that is exactly correct. People underestimate just how nefarious these reactionaries are. And how low they're willing to go. We are in the middle of a new Lochner era. We're in a Lochner era. And it's gonna get bad. Not only do I expect them to basically undermine, if not overturn Obergefell, things are gonna get worse. They're not just gonna undo the progress that we've made socially, but they're gonna prevent us from making any future progress. If you're not really grappling with the implications of this yet, let me put it this way. Let's assume that in 10 years, 15 years, we actually get a progressive president and we pass Medicare for all and that president signs it into law. This court like that can invalidate that law by claiming that it's unconstitutional. So it doesn't matter if Congress, in writing this law, they try to, you know, make it constitutionally soundproof and they literally cite provisions of the Constitution to make sure that, you know, there's no way that they can overrule it. We're working with reactionaries here. These aren't, you know, individuals who are trying to actually follow the Constitution to the best of their ability. These are reactionaries. These are activist judges. These aren't judicial scholars. These are fucking extremists. So we should treat them as such and stop being naive about the situation that we find ourselves in and the only way out of this mess is to, A, pack the Supreme Court or B, codify all of these rights into law. Neither of these are likely scenarios that are going to come to fruition, right? Because in order to introduce a new constitutional amendment, I mean, we can't even get rid of the filibusters. Of course, Congress won't pass any constitutional amendment protecting abortion or marriage equality. We can't even get the Equality Act passed into law. So of course, you know, Congress isn't going to do something like that, no matter how popular gay marriage or abortion becomes. But when it comes to packing the Supreme Court, this conversation around this issue, it just diminished after the election. I guess liberals and Democrats think that it's no longer necessary. So, you know, I just feel like they don't necessarily care and this might be cynical, but I think it's true. I think that Democrats, they want to let things get bad. At least some Democrats, they want things to get bad. They want the Supreme Court to overturn our rights so they can A, fundraise off of the bad things that are happening and B, use this as a tool to pitch to voters to come out and vote for them. You know, it's kind of like this issue that is a gift to the parties that keeps on giving. Democrats can use this to say, hey, elect us and we'll fight this and Republicans can say, hey, elect us and we'll protect the progress that we've made in repealing abortion and gay marriage. It's truly a disgusting situation and it's really untenable. Like, this barbarity that we're seeing, it's like, I don't think that it's sustainable. At some point, people are going to get fed up. Democracy is going to collapse. I mean, I'm not trying to make any prediction, but this is unacceptable and, you know, if we want to live in a country that is egalitarian, that is modern, then we can't keep allowing reactionaries to control everything that we do. It's just, it's not sustainable. It's not just that reactionaries have captured the Supreme Court for a generation and they're undoing social progress. Around the country, Republicans are imposing draconian voter suppression laws. They're planning on gerrymandering themselves back to victory. They're explicitly authoritarian. So if we don't treat them like the threat that they are, the fascistic threat that they are, then we're going to lose our country to them. So, you know, I don't want to be overly alarmist and I don't want to sound like I'm fear-mongering, but people need to wake the fuck up and realize that the situation is bad and it's going to get worse. Stop being complacent, wake up, and get involved. When it comes to de-radicalizing people, when it comes to de-programming people who became, you know, involved in conspiracy theories and conspiratorial groups, I don't necessarily think that there's any magic answer or magic solution. There's no silver bullet. But what I do think is really useful is listening to people who came from these sectors of society. Listening to people who was once anti-vax but then changed their mind. Listening to someone who was a member of the far right but had a change of heart. Find out what specifically led to their de-radicalization and try to implement that on some sort of a wide scale or use it even in social, you know, conversations, interpersonal relationships to de-radicalize and de-program people that we know. But one person who I think is really really interesting is Christian Piccolini. This is someone who actually is a former white supremacist. He was a leader in the neo-nazi movement and now he's speaking up. He launched a podcast, he wrote a book about his radicalization and de-radicalization. And what he says is really really important and he has some remarks about what is driving the radicalization that we're seeing in the United States today. But before we get to that I just want to give you some background on who this individual is. So as David Masquiatro of Salon reports, the foul odor of fascism has become inescapable in the American atmosphere. Republican officials across the country are working overtime to undermine the right to vote, leading right-wing pundits, brazenly promulgate racist conspiracy theories and the Anti-Defamation League reports that he saw a 45% increase in hate crimes throughout the Midwest. There is perhaps no time more urgent to learn from one of fascism's former foot soldiers. Christian Piccolini became a neo-nazi as a teenager in the working class Chicago suburb of Blue Island in the late 1980s. As the leader of the Chicago area skinheads and singer in the white para rock band The Final Solution, Piccolini was one of the most effective recruiters in the white supremacist movement. His story transformed however from horrific to redemptive and inspiring. Piccolini is now one of the most effective anti- hate activists in the United States. The details of his transition from Nazi to progressive, from hate leader to democratic healer are available in his fascinating and important memoir, White American Youth, might ascend into America's most violent hate movement and how I got out. In the past few years Piccolini's warnings have become increasingly severe as he and his colleagues at Free Radicals worked to preserve the promise of multi-racial democracy in the United States. Piccolini worries that the nation's complacency will soon meet a catastrophic end. And what he's saying here is that the rise of fascism in the United States has been so swift. The popularity increase is so huge that if we don't address this right now immediately and substantially, it might be too late. Because you've got to understand democracies they're never going to last forever, right? Every single democracy in the world has a shelf life. A lot of baby democracies that emerge end up reverting back to authoritarian or liberal regimes. Because democracy is a really difficult thing you have to have buy-in, you have to have institutions that protect democracy. But when you have so many people in the United States, you know, believing that the election was stolen and literally openly advocating for a military coup in the United States alongside white supremacists and fascist tendencies and beliefs that's just a recipe for disaster. So what Christian is trying to do seemingly is warn Americans that if you don't do something now it may be too late. If you don't save democracy save America from itself it may be too late. And what he points out here which I think is really fascinating and why I want to talk about this is this resurgence of white supremacy and the reason why it's so much more popular now. I mean it's not like white supremacy ever fully went away in the United States of America. It's always been here, right? White supremacy is embedded in American institutions. This country was founded on white supremacy. So it's not like it ever went away but there was indeed a resurgence and he saw this resurgence around the time that Obama was elected president. Where, you know, there was this revolt against the idea that somebody who isn't white became president of the United States. We all thought that this was, you know, the signal that America is moving on or trying to move on at least from its racist past and, you know, people in the country they decided to do the opposite. Many people decided to revolt. Many people didn't like seeing a black man as president. That led to the birther movement with Donald Trump and etc. But what he sees is not only the resurgence of white supremacy but this normalization of it this mainstreaming of white supremacy that didn't necessarily exist when he was younger. Like when he was young he talked about, you know, the things that he would say just to his friends in his musical group that you'd never hear on mainstream media. You'd never hear in conservative circles but the things that was confined to white supremacist circles he's saying is now mainstream. It's dominant in conservative circles. And he has a couple of examples here. First, there's the more blame conspiracy oriented language regarding the others controlling the power structure that is starting to exist in the language of QAnon in terms of talking about globalism. But also more specifically what's penetrated the right is replacement theory or the great replacement. What I mean by that is white supremacists believe that the demographics of the country are changing rapidly and that soon white people will lose agency and power because they will be the minority. Whether that is happening statistically or not is a different story because what white supremacists believe is that it is an intentional process being put forward by global cabals of in most cases Jewish people who are trying to upset the balance of white power. White supremacists claim that diversity is genocide for the white race. They believe that the promotion of multiculturalism is a tool of white genocide. We've started to hear those ideas and similar ideas come out of Tucker Carlson, a Fox News host with millions of viewers. It isn't just people like me when I was hanging out in dark alleys reading pamphlets from other conspiracy theorists. People are now getting this theory in hatred from Donald Trump and various people in his orbit. They are getting it from Paul Gosar, a Republican congressman from Arizona. These are people with suits and ties. They look like the mainstream. They sound like the mainstream and in certain cases they've been elected to powerful positions by the mainstream and yet they are saying the same dangerous and outlandish things that a 17 year old Christian Piccolini said when he was sporting a swastika tattoo. It is the whole notion that if white people don't wake up now that they will be over run. If you watch Tucker Carlson, people like David Duke and Tom Metzger in the old days said almost the exact same thing. They said white people wake up, immigration, the religions they are forcing down our throats, multiculturalism. It's all a conspiracy to destroy our white power. Sometimes they use more palatable language but they are using fear rhetoric to make white people afraid that they are being overrun by these other people and forces. Whether it is Islam, refugees, crime, immigrants, or even the way they talk about outsourcing of jobs. It is all rooted in that same idea that white people have to be afraid. So the way that I interpret this warning from him is that it's so common now that there's been this sense of normalization of this rhetoric and people have become desensitized to it. When we hear Tucker Carlson talk about the great replacement theory we kind of just brush it aside and say yeah that's Tucker Carlson. I mean people condemn it but overall nobody is really as outraged as they should be. Like somebody on mainstream media, the most popular news show in the country just explicitly talked about the great replacement theory unironically and we're just okay with it. This is a sign that things are bad. These are signs that we have to wake up and that's what Christian is really highlighting here. It's so mainstream now that it's everywhere and it's easy to dismiss it. It's easy to be desensitized and to be numb to it. But to be numb to it in and of itself is an issue, that's a problem. Because when you're numb to it, when you don't call it out, when you stop being aware of all the white supremacist rhetoric that we're hearing then you know people they feel as if there's less social disincentives to use it. We have to make white supremacists feel ashamed to use white supremacist rhetoric to even get to this point where Tucker Carlson is brazenly talking about the great replacement theory on national television. I mean that really proves how far we've fallen and that's so horrifying. I mean a healthy society wouldn't allow for this. Tucker Carlson wouldn't feel comfortable espousing white supremacist talking points, talking about the great replacement conspiracy theory if society wasn't accepting of it, right? But because people are numb to it, it has inadvertently become socially acceptable again to just be blatantly white supremacist and use white supremacist talking points. And Christian is saying look, you've got to wake up before it's too late. All of these things are signs that we are seeing mass radicalization of lots of Americans, millions of Americans and the fact that people aren't outraged as they should be I mean you see some outrage but I mean the fact that people aren't in mass demanding Tucker Carlson's resignation when he's talking about the great replacement, that's a sign of societal decline that's a sign of white supremacy becoming socially accepted in America which we should have never allowed to happen letting Donald Trump get elected in and of itself after he was as racist as he was, was a sign that you know we've allowed white supremacy to be normalized and that's something that we absolutely have to fight against vociferously so like Donald Trump kind of ushered in this era of blatant racism right? Politicians aren't using dog whistles anymore, they're just saying the quiet part loud and I wouldn't be surprised if Tucker Carlson or some other right wing pundit just said the 14 words and there's only a little bit of outrage right? I'm sure media matters would write an article about it, left twitter would speak out, democrats would speak out but overall it's just another news cycle that people would move on from when in actuality people have to look at this as a sign of societal decline, as a sign of our democracy dying, of our country being captured by white supremacist extremists so you know I want people to take Christians warning seriously and push back more fiercely against people like Tucker Carlson and anyone who's helped to normalize Tucker Carlson is absolutely part of the problem so I'll leave that there, this is really I mean it's not like I'm surprised by what he's saying but it's still like to hear somebody from his position who was in this world say this, it really is kind of like a really scary thing to contemplate and you know I've been thinking about this after reading Jason Stanley's How Fascism Works great book I'd recommend to everyone he talks about the rise of fascism in Brazil and India and the United States and you know it's these are all signs that we should have known to look for but we kind of just you know people are tired people aren't paying attention as they should and we've kind of allowed white supremacy to regain a foothold in the United States like in the public again like it's socially acceptable again and it's hard to put that cat back in the bag and some might argue that you can't but you've certainly got to try because this is not acceptable and certainly if we want to last as a democracy as a multicultural democracy in a pluralistic society we can't allow these fascists to be as dominant as they are now so unless you've been living under a rock I'm sure by now you've heard that thousands of Americans have been trying to take ivermectin which is traditionally used as a horse dewormer to either cure themselves of COVID-19 or prevent COVID-19 either way that's not what it's intended to be but it's leading to feed stores across the country putting up signs like this telling people you can't take ivermectin it's not for you now is it true that ivermectin is prescribed to human beings in human doses no available prize money for humans no available prize money for humans no available prize money for you yes that's true but for parasites it's not approved by the FDA for use against COVID-19 we have a vaccine that is safe and widely available and it's free so that's what people should seek out if they want to protect themselves against COVID-19 but instead people are taking ivermectin and they're only able to get the horse version or the sheep version because their doctors won't prescribe it to them since doctors know that it doesn't treat COVID-19 and so they're taking these giant doses flooding poison control with thousands of calls and in many instances they are literally shitting out their intestinal linings because they're taking a horse dose of COVID-19 like this animal that's thousands of pounds humans are taking that much ivermectin because they were led to believe that it will protect them against COVID-19 now there's a lot of origins as to how ivermectin became so popular among the anti-vax community you know there's a lot of facebook groups there's quack doctors that promote ivermectin as you know a miracle cure for COVID-19 but what i do know is that the largest news network in America has definitely played a role case in point ivermectin which can and is around the world used to treat and prevent the spread of the coronavirus it's not some crackpot fish tank cleaner it's a real drug the FDA tweeting you are not a horse you are not a cow seriously y'all stop ivermectin is not a recommended treatment for COVID-19 it is not a recommended drug to prevent COVID-19 ivermectin ivermectin ivermectin it's all coming back to some sort of mind control because treating an illness doesn't get your mask on doesn't get your kids out of school they don't want to talk about recovery because they're a threat to higher priced medications and vaccines now you have YouTube censoring senate testimony of Dr. Corey talking about ivermectin it's a really important point that you're making because YouTube removed two videos there's a good chance everyone listening at home has never heard of ivermectin because Google has gone about censoring they took all of those posts down we know that our FDA has in many ways failed us by not allowing for the use of ivermectin a miracle drug when it comes to treating COVID-19 i'm not a medical expert they haven't even given emergency use authorization for ivermectin taken early it can mitigate symptoms of COVID-19 this was a bad week for those who are in business to bash ivermectin it's the new McCarthyism if it's extremist to wonder about the origins of COVID if it's extremist to wonder about the utility of masks outdoors if it's extremist to wonder about ivermectin as a therapeutic drug then count me as a radical yeah now the reason why Fox News does this is because they can do this and get away with it there's zero accountability whatsoever zero accountability they don't lose advertisers viewers don't get turned off to this misinformation and they know that this is wrong like Fox News is a company that literally has vaccine passports every single Fox News pundit that promotes ivermectin they are required to disclose their vaccination status they know that the vaccines work and ivermectin doesn't but they still do this for whatever reason because they're pandering to their audience who has been led to believe that ivermectin works but the reason why they do this is because they know they can get away with it and that's absurd like before you think that i'm advocating for censorship ask yourself this what happens if Fox News like if a Fox News pundit let's say Tucker Carlson accidentally swears and says fuck on television what's going to happen the FCC is going to find Fox News thousands of dollars but yet when Fox News promotes medical misinformation that leads to people literally shitting out their intestinal linings what happens nothing zero fine zero accountability so they will continue to do things like this because they know there's no downside they can pander to their base which maybe they feel they're losing to OAN or Newsmax by becoming increasingly insane promoting these you know cures for COVID-19 and you know anti-vax misinformation and they know that it's not going to affect their bottom line so unless you hit them where it hurts have a mass advertiser boycott or find them things like this are going to continue to happen so for some additional details we go to media matters who reports there's been growing evidence against the efficacy of ivermectin a drug most commonly used to treat animals in coronavirus treatment recently a popularly cited study about ivermectin as a miracle COVID-19 treatment was retracted the FDA also highlighted the drugs very dangerous side effects if taken to access or in combination with other medications especially the livestock version which is highly concentrated and toxic to humans in August poison control centers across the United States were overwhelmed with calls about ivermectin and in states with surging COVID-19 many stores have reported shortages of the drug due to its incorrect usage as a COVID-19 treatment in Oklahoma many stores sold out of needed supplies for horses and other livestock in Mississippi one person was hospitalized after taking the drug from a livestock feed store to treat COVID-19 so it's so frustrating because one of the excuses was I don't want to take this COVID-19 vaccine because it's not FDA approved it only has emergency authorization from the FDA now we have at least the Pfizer drug fully FDA approved the Moderna will be approved in a couple of weeks most likely but yet when it comes to a horse dewormer people are rushing to feed stores across the country to get that in lieu of a highly effective widely available vaccine I just I don't get it and you could probably hear the exasperation in my voice I'm tired like the misinformation that we see you know it's always harmful regardless of the circumstances but during a pandemic it's especially deadly if you want to prevent yourself from getting sick you get vaccinated that's the way you do it you don't take horse dewormer you don't try to seek out some sort of an alternative cure or natural or whatever cure you just do what the evidence dictates you should do and you should take the COVID-19 vaccine not Ivermectin whoever is promoting this like Fox News it is absolutely despicable and it's leading to people getting sick but they don't care now again I don't necessarily care if they are dumb or disingenuous it's a distinction without a difference either way it's harmful and it has to stop but it won't unless there's some real accountability for the people who are propagating all this misinformation so apparently Eric Clapton is an anti-vaxxer yeah Eric Clapton anti-vaxxer and this isn't just something that he's vocalized you know he's talking about how he doesn't believe in the vaccines via Twitter he's so big of an anti-vaxxer he literally wrote an anti-vaxx song which has been dubbed an anti-vaxx anthem by Mary Popinfuss of HuffPost so I can't play the song for you obviously because of copyright reasons but I do have the lyrics for you but before I give you the lyrics to this song the so-called anti-vaxx anthem I do want to give you some additional context so as HuffPost reports the human anti-vaxxing rocker Eric Clapton has put out what appears to be a musical rant against pandemic restrictions and vaccines the animated music video for the legendary guitarist's apparent anti-vaxxing anthem this has got to stop features an evil puppeteer and protestors brandishing signs reading liberty and stop it also includes an illustration of Jam for Freedom the British anti-lockdown street performance group that Clapton supports noted Rolling Stone Clapton's latest the veteran British musician 76 has blasted Covid-19 vaccines since what he called his own disastrous health struggles after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine after the first jab he straight away had severe reactions which lasted 10 days he explained in a note that was shared on social media in May after the second injection quote my hands and feet were either frozen, numb or burning and pretty much useless for two weeks I feared I would never play again he has characterized assurances that Covid-19 vaccines are safe as quote propaganda it's hard to bite my tongue with what I now know wrote Clapton who refuses to perform at any venue where vaccines are required I will not perform on any stage where there is a discriminated audience present he declared last month wow on social media unless there's provision made for all people to attend I reserve the right to cancel the show health experts around the world say that serious side effects from Covid-19 vaccines are infinitesimal compared to the health and lives saved so I'm gonna sound like an ageist prick but I'm gonna say this anyway like when he was thinking oh my god I might not never play again because of these side effects from a vaccine I mean my dude you're like a thousand years old how much longer do you think you have to continue playing you're 76 do you think you have another 30 years of playing I mean I'm just trying to figure out like his his mindset here and sure it's really unfortunate to experience side effects from the vaccines nobody likes side effects from medications but I mean if you were to get Covid-19 and you weren't vaccinated you would have wished that you had those side effects because those side effects as you know experts are saying it pales in comparison to the side effects of getting Covid-19 and what's really especially gross about this is the fact that he got the vaccine and now he's discouraging others from taking the vaccine so he's protected in the event he gets Covid-19 but now how many people will he convince to not get vaccinated because he had side effects for 10 days it's just it's truly yeah yeah it's really disgusting and you're going to see people who are kind of like skeptical of vaccines relatively vaccine hesitant that chose to get vaccinated but then they're going to attribute whatever negative or physical or even mental illnesses that they have to the vaccines like if they have like I don't know a headache they're going to say well I was vaccinated six months ago like we're going to have to really look out for this this is going to become a common phenomenon because people are going to work backwards from the conclusion that vaccines are bad and this is going to be used as evidence that the vaccines are indeed dangerous people are going to say oh well Eric Clapton someone who I like this legendary guitarist you know he says that the vaccines are bad he had a bad experience so I trust him and you know that same person might choose to not get vaccinated because of what Eric Clapton says and then they might contract COVID-19 give it to someone else and they might die or a loved one that they infect might die because of this misinformation because Eric Clapton thinks that he's being some sort of a rebel because he's anti-vax it's just really frustrating so I want to play you the song but I can't obviously but I've got the next best thing which are lyrics and the lyrics here are very very basic and stupid it's not like he's not on the level of Buddy Brown or Tom McDonald but it's still extremely stupid and when I read this like I think that this is a simpleton who wrote these lyrics so he says this has got to stop enough is enough I can't take this BS any longer see it's relatable if the BS he's referring to is the pandemic I would very much like to move on from this pandemic we've been dealing with this now for almost 19 months I'd like to move on I'd like to get back to normal but because of anti lockdown anti mask anti vaccine dumb fucks like you we're still seeing the virus spread so yeah I'm also tired of this BS but the BS that is coming out of your mouth it's gone far enough if you want to claim my soul you'll have to come and break down this door so I'm assuming this is like some sort of in um I don't know some tacit attack on this idea of vaccine mandates but your soul was already claimed because you got vaccinated so it's too late for you that was the mark of the beast you're going to go to hell Eric Clapton so too late I knew that something was going on wrong when you started laying down the law I can't move my hands I break out in sweat I want to cry can't take it anymore this is him like presumably talking about the side effects that he got from the AstraZeneca vaccine grow the fuck up grow the fuck up we all had side effects from the vaccine I was sick for about a day I had chills the night when I was vaccinated on my second dose of the Moderna vaccine and then the next day I felt like pretty tired I had body aches and then I felt better the next day and then by the third day I was fine now I'm also a lot younger than Eric Clapton so you know it's probably going to affect him differently but grow the fuck up like this is a virus that we're dealing with and we should be thankful that we have this vaccine so soon it's like a miracle right that we have a vaccine that's highly effective and safe and it's widely available in developed countries but what do you do you act like a fucking child because you feel sick from it okay well then you know imagine how you feel if you got COVID dumb fuck I can't move my hands okay read that okay so he's repeating I believe that's the chorus I'm not sure it's gone far enough I've been around long long time seen it all and I'm used to being free so you never grew up in a world where vaccine mandates were a thing because they've always been a thing so if you're used to being free then it's just like what your perception of freedom is you are only thinking of vaccine mandates because this issue has been politicized thanks to dumb fucks like you but your freedom isn't being impeded by vaccine mandates see you're impeding on the freedom of others by propagating this misinformation by encouraging people to not get vaccinated because when they don't get vaccinated when this virus continues to spread then it mutates and any mutation might bypass the existing vaccines that we have the new variant might very well bypass the vaccines right so I want my freedom my freedom from this virus so you can go fuck yourself I don't care about what you believe is freedom freedom is truly being able to live your life and not have to worry about a highly contagious deadly virus these people are so petulant I know who I am try to do what's right so lock me up and throw away the key this is the conservative persecution complex these people really want to feel as if they're victims for some reason my dude you are very very wealthy you can shut the fuck up hide away from your mansion and live the best life you could possibly live I'm sure that he has a fucking indoor pool and indoor bowling alley like you are as rich as you can possibly be and you're trying to be the victim shut the fuck up oh my god these people are insufferable to me thinking of my kids what's left for them and then what's coming down the road the light in the tunnel could be the south bound train lord please help them with their load this has got to stop enough is enough I can't take this BS any longer okay I think we're getting down to the climax here it's gone far enough if you want to claim my soul you'll have to come and break down this door this door this door this door break down this door this door this door this door mr. Clapton sir get fucked get fucked you absolute insufferable cunt and I can call him a cunt because I mean you know he's British right is he British I think I said he's British right that's not as big of a deal to British people yeah he's a British musician so I can call him a cunt and even if he was an American I would still call him a cunt because this is just cunt behavior like you're a petulant child shut the fuck up you're making anti-vax anthems like is this really what you want your legacy to be anti-science during a global pandemic jesus I mean you're 76 but grow up clearly you haven't matured mentally enough grow the fuck up stop being a petulant baby stop discouraging people from getting vaccinated how many people are gonna you're gonna like be indirectly responsible for killing because of this dumb fuck anthem just Jesus I'm so sick of these people I'm exhausted but I mean we'll continue to see this stupidity because that's the world that we live in it is ruled by dumb fucks unfortunately if you follow this program you know that it's really difficult for us on the left to get people in America to pay attention to Enbridge's line 3 pipeline this is basically dappled 2.0 where indigenous protesters are leading the fight against this new pipeline and they're being brutalized by police forces their sovereignty is at risk of being violated here and it already has been violated but the media just isn't paying attention to this massive scandal and the Biden administration is remaining silent even if he claims to be a fighter for climate justice but thankfully this movement to stop line 3 got a massive boost when members of the squad showed up in solidarity to march with the activists fighting to stop line 3 so as Jessica Corbett of Common Dreams explains members of the progressive squad held a press conference in Minnesota on Friday to draw attention to the indigenous led fight against Enbridge's line 3 tar sands pipeline which water protectors and environmentalists have been battling on the ground and in court hosted by congresswoman Ilhan Omar the press conference also featured remarks from US representatives Cori Bush Ayanna Presley and Rashida Tlaib as well as Minnesota state senator Mary Kunish we are here because nearly all of Minnesota is in a state of drought Omar explained we are here because wildfires are burning in northern Minnesota we are here because the twin cities just have the hottest summer on record we are here because the climate crisis is here the climate crisis is now she continued the climate crisis is happening and the last thing we need to do is allow the very criminals who created this crisis to build more fossil fuel infrastructure Omar pointed out that the Canadian companies partly completed line 3 pipeline intended to replace an aging pipeline with smaller capacity is set to cross wet lands and over 200 water bodies endangering the health of her constituents and treaty lands of indigenous peoples the Minnesota Democrat also highlighted law enforcement suppression of line 3 protesters noting that over 700 water protectors and indigenous leaders have been arrested now their presence there in and of itself is huge because them being there draws attention to their presence it gets people to ask questions about why they're there what is line 3 why should I be concerned with line 3 and after all of the headlines we've seen just this year as it relates to climate change it shouldn't even be a question so the fact that they're going there when other lawmakers don't even seem to care when the Biden administration has just been dead silent on this it's really important it matters now before they actually went there Ilhan Omar actually penned an open letter to the Biden administration urging him to halt this pipeline to shut it down because he has the authority as president to do that he did it with the Keystone XL pipeline and he could do it now but he's not acting because not enough people are making noise so this right here what they're doing is invaluable because it helps with that effort now what's interesting is that another lawmaker from Minnesota a Republican went on Fox News and he had something to say about their presence there which is really interesting speaking of the left AOC and the squad they're targeting the line 3 oil pipeline the project that is in your district they want it cancelled speaking of inflation and the cost of gasoline you don't want it cancelled why well you're exactly right I spoke about this in downtown St. Paul this past this morning listen Enbridge line 3 replacement it's a replacement pipeline of a 60 year old pipe almost a four billion dollar investment in Minnesota union skill labor those are our friends and neighbors that are making good wages and the squad is in our great state protesting that pipeline which is 92 plus percent complete there is going to be oil running through that pipeline and it's just coincidental that my assumption is they flew into Minneapolis St. Paul area this pipeline services a the Rosemont facility that makes produces the jet feel so they can arrive in their jets and so what we have to do is we have to understand that energy dominance and mining dominance is a big part of us securing our supply chain dependency for this nation we've learned so much over COVID and we're going to stand up against these socialist policies and one of the things we have to do is put good bipartisan legislation together and again the Democratic Party from this administration down is not equipped to lead and they have no problem asking OPEC and countries in the Middle East that don't like us to pump more oil to help us it just makes no sense congressman thank you for coming on today good luck with the pipeline you're welcome thanks for having me you bet ya so everything he said there is idiotic not just because it is devoid of common sense but because he's not telling you something he didn't disclose a really important detail that his constituents and Fox News viewers probably would want to know before hearing him speak about this but before we get to that he mentioned energy dominance oh if the United States government wants to be energy independent and you know be dominant in this field we have to allow for things like this no if you want to be energy independent in fact fuck that not just the energy independent but be global leaders here we know what to do we invest in clean green renewable technology we stop subsidizing fossil fuels and we stop allowing for more fossil fuel extraction and this sort of infrastructure anyone who's talking about energy independence or energy dominance without talking about renewables and clean energy is lying they're being disingenuous and he also got in a you know a nice little jab there because they participate in society oh well I'm guessing they came here in private jets so you know producing oil you know helps get their private jets to place shut the fuck up climate change isn't going to be solved if individually we all choose collectively to make better decisions if we all reduce our carbon footprints just 100 companies are responsible for 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions this is something that requires government intervention stopping these greenhouse gas polluters from continuing to fuck up the planet he knows this he's just being disingenuous he also threw in just randomly oh we have to stand up against socialist policies it's not really socialist to advocate for a future we can't have a future we can't have a habitable planet if we continue to let these companies fuck up our planet that's not socialist it's not capitalist it's just being a human being and not a sociopath but what I want to let you know is something that this dumb fuck didn't disclose to Fox news viewers so when you go to open secrets you can see that Enbridge donated to quite a bit of politicians right Republicans and Democrats mostly Republicans but Democrats too and when you search for representative Stabber's name well would you look at that they gave him $5,000 in this last election cycle $5,000 but I'm sure that you know he's just defending this pipeline out of the goodness of his heart I mean wouldn't Fox news disclose this really relevant fact to their viewers before bringing on this paid shill like this is literally a paid shill this man literally took thousands of dollars $5,000 in one cycle from this company and here he is defending this company defending a project that they're trying to pursue which would net them millions of dollars possibly billions of dollars in profits don't you think that that money that campaign contribution is really relevant here to this conversation shouldn't viewers who are tuning in know that this person is a shill for Enbridge and you know what's interesting is that when you look at the contributions that Ilhan Omar took from Enbridge well look at that $0 nothing found so should we believe Ilhan Omar who didn't take money from this company or should we believe the individual who literally took thousands of dollars from this company who should we believe yeah the fact that he didn't disclose that the fact that Fox news did not disclose that really important fact that conflict of interest tells you everything you need to know there is not a single good reason to be in favor of this pipeline yes it's replacing an old pipeline but that's not what we should be doing going forward we need to be building out our clean green energy infrastructure wind solar hydro and not continuing down this same path that has led to us fucking up the habitability of our planet it's unacceptable and the more shills that I see who take money from these companies and lie to their constituents lie to Americans the more angry I get we've passed the climate tipping point the IPCC says we're out of time and catastrophic climate change is inevitable at this point it's a matter of how bad do we want it to get that's the conversation that we're having and people like Stauber here who took money from this company apparently he wanted to get really bad he doesn't care that his children and grandchildren are going to live in a planet that is a hellscape due to climate apocalypse he doesn't care all he cares is that his donor gets to do things that make them more money even if it's to the detriment of the human species it's truly morally reprehensible and if Stauber had any dignity whatsoever he would resign in shame Fox News would be fined for peddling this level of propaganda not disclosing the ties to this company of this congressman it's so disgusting but totally predictable well folks I'm not sure if you heard the good news or not but the pandemic is apparently over we did it we defeated COVID-19 as a nation we should all be so proud of ourselves this is what the US government seems to believe because the unemployment insurance meant to protect workers during a time of crisis like global pandemics that's run out and it's not coming back so as Axios reported on Labor Day more than 7 million workers lost their unemployment benefits mostly women and people of color now even though those 7 million workers individually are affected each of them have children and spouses so overall the loss of these pandemic unemployment insurance benefits is going to impact about 10% of the total US population I mean at a time when the Delta variant surges across the country and people are dealing with the worst that they've seen in some counties of COVID-19 we should be paying people to stay home but that's not what happens in a late-stage in a capitalist society we need to basically pretend if the pandemic is over send people back to work as quickly as possible because that's what's good for the economy we don't necessarily care about people so much as we care about profits so yeah now for more on this we've got a Matt Brunig of Jackabin who explains the Department of Labor released its weekly unemployment insurance report on Friday this is the last report before pandemic unemployment benefits are eliminated across gives us the best indicator of how many people will be affected by the cuts in the report we learned that 9.2 million people are currently receiving benefits from either the pandemic emergency unemployment compensation program or the pandemic unemployment assistance program another 0.1 million filed an initial claim for PUA in the last week according to the census household poll survey the average household that is receiving UI benefits has 3.8 members in it this means that around 35 million people 10% of the US population live in households that are scheduled to lose unemployment income today these are not small cuts either based on what happened in the same states that already cut these benefits we know that around half of those on UI will see their benefits drop to $0 while the remaining half will see their benefits cut by $300 per week which is equivalent to $15,200 per year those formally on unemployment insurance will also cut their spending by about $145 per week or $7,540 annually which will have negative effects on the revenue and employment of the businesses they patronize so what's happening isn't just cruel it's idiotic again we should be paying people to stay home we're never going to be able to defeat this pandemic if it continues to spread if people are out in public pretending as if it's over but by cutting off millions of Americans from this program pretending as if this is no longer necessary you're just going to propagate the spread of this virus even more and Joe Biden's administration has been up front about the fact that they have no plans to renew this so good job good job leaving millions of Americans hanging during a pandemic I mean how many people as a result of this are going to lose their homes be unable to make rent be unable to feed themselves I mean and when this happens what do you think is going to happen with regard to COVID-19 if you know somebody loses their apartment they have to move in with someone else that's more people congregating in one space increases the chances of COVID-19 spreading it's the last thing that you want to do again every single person should be paid to stay home I sound like a broken record but that's what you do if you want to contain the spread of the virus in the states of America we don't have this mentality you're on your own you have the vaccine take it and then shut the fuck up go back to work as if people weren't already trying to go back to work now I want to play this clip from case study QB it's of an economist who went on MSNBC to explain why people who believe that the individuals currently on unemployment insurance are just lazy that isn't what's happening President Biden said the economy is strong enough to end these unemployment checks but we just talked about it those August job numbers that were released Friday really show a big slowdown in hiring what I found so interesting about your article is you really dispel the myth that everyone collecting benefits can work but doesn't want to you talk to people who are literally taking low paying jobs switching careers even selling plasma to make ends meet what's the impact here what's the world impact that these benefits will have and the lack of them in a climate like this yeah I think there's this idea that because there are jobs out there and there are jobs out there then everybody could just go back to work overnight and there's a lot of reasons why that is not the case you know the pandemic itself is an obvious reason there are a lot of people who still face significant health concerns I spoke to a woman in Pennsylvania whose son is compromised he's too young to be vaccinated he can't go back to school in person and so that rules out a lot of jobs for her I talked to people who are looking very actively for jobs but are not able to find them in their industry there in some cases they're considered too qualified for some jobs over qualified for some jobs and not qualified enough for others we're seeing child care is continues to be disrupted I'm speaking to you this morning from southern Indiana where I'm visiting some family they schools here started up at the beginning of August and in this school district shut down two weeks in to go remote because of a surge in COVID cases and so we're again you know if you've got kids at home you may not be able to work right now so it's not as simple as saying that everybody can just go back to work overnight he's exactly right this idea that nobody wants to work is so stupid it's so stupid as if people want to be impoverished for extended periods of time as if people don't want to be independent and find jobs that's not the case but even if let's assume the worst for a moment let's assume that people actually didn't want to work and they were like trying to you know squeeze out as much from unemployment as they possibly can can you really blame them who wants to work during a pandemic and deal with all these care-ins that we're seeing in viral videos like my niece works at Walmart and they have a door greeter who gives out masks to people and enforces the mask mandate do you think that dealing with all the stress that that causes from anti-mask dipshits is worth like the minimum wage of course it isn't so I don't blame people for not wanting to work especially considering the fact that when you look at this graph worker compensation has not kept up with productivity and the stagnation in wages is correlated with the drop in union memberships so people are working harder but they're not benefiting from the fruits of their labor and also when you consider the fact that we're living through a global pandemic I don't blame people for not wanting to work it's not actually the case people aren't on unemployment because they don't want to work they're on unemployment because they don't have a fucking choice they don't have a fucking choice and even if they did have a choice they should still be getting money from the government to stay home because we should be going into lockdown again ICUs are at full capacity in states across the country what happened to flatten the curve combating this disease together collectively of course that's all out the window so this is extremely cruel it's unnecessary the government has the money has the means to pay people indefinitely throughout the duration of this entire pandemic but they're choosing not to and that speaks to the cruelty of the US government even when democrats are in control you think that things would be at least a little bit better when it comes to distributing funds to people but no Joe Biden is aware of the fact that the pandemic in many states is worse than it's ever been and he's allowing this to run out it's a choice remember that this is a choice and it goes to show you that our government is cruel and neoliberalism is absolutely a curse and anyone who thinks that it's necessary for people to lose their unemployment insurance so that way they can go back to work because they're just mooching shut the fuck up we all should be technically mooching right now because again that's the only way you combat this virus if people stay the fuck home but they can't stay home so yeah this is really it's a depressing story especially considering that we got this news on Labor Day I mean it's not like this is a surprise you know this runs out on Labor Day so it's just it really goes to show you what America thinks about its workers whether the government more specifically believes its workers deserve and that is jack fucking shit unfortunately last week Texas effectively banned abortion this week Governor Greg Abbott signed the law one of the most draconian voter suppression bills we've seen yet and it's like Texas is trying to go out of its way to be like the worst state in the country but it does have a lot of competition but you know even if you dislike Texas you can't write off what Texas does because what they do has a domino effect other states obviously want to replicate the bad things that Texas is doing Florida already said that they're going to propose a bill similar to Texas's abortion ban and many states are going to try to replicate what they did here when it comes to suppressing the votes of mostly black and brown communities in Texas in fact many states have already passed bills like this one Georgia being one of them Florida being another but let's take a look at what Texas did here because immediately after Governor Greg Abbott signed this bill into law there was lots of legal challenges by various groups and that's really really good to see so as Sarah Ruiz grows men of HuffPost reports lawsuits are pouring in to challenge a new law in Texas that voting rights advocates have slammed anti-voter, undemocratic and a dangerous voter suppression bill Senate Bill 1 which was signed by Republican Governor Greg Abbott on Tuesday bans 24-hour drive-through voting creates harsher voter ID requirements for mail-in voting and stops election officials from sending voters unsolicited applications for mail-in ballots within hours of Abbott signing the bill the NAACP legal defense fund filed the federal lawsuit challenging the law the group said it intentionally targets voting methods disproportionately used by voters of color. Latino civil rights groups LULAC, VOTA Latino and others also sued. They alleged that the provisions in the new law impose an undue burden on the right to vote including purposely intending to limit access for voters of color and disproportionately impacting disabled voters and those with limited English proficiency. The American Civil Liberties Union brought its own lawsuit last week after Republican lawmakers in Texas passed the bill despite Democrats repeated efforts to block it. The group said the law violates the Americans with Disabilities Act the Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution. Republicans and state legislatures across the country have been pushing hundreds of bills that would restrict voting. Such efforts have already become law in several states other than Texas including Georgia, Arkansas and Arizona. Voting rights groups have been urging Congress to pass legislation to protect voting rights but two federal bills the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the For the People Act which have passed in the Democratic-led U.S. House faced tough odds in the Senate where Democrats have only a slim majority. Republicans oppose the bills and key Senate Democrats have refused to back filibuster reform that would allow legislation to advance without meeting a 60-vote threshold. So this is bad obviously and you know all of the efforts of state Democratic lawmakers to block this. That was all commendable but I think that this result was inevitable. This bill passed and it's going to continue to be something that we see in the United States. Voting rights is an issue that isn't going to go away anytime soon and the worst part about this becoming an issue again is that Democrats just aren't capable of taking it as seriously as they need to be. If Joe Biden was as concerned with voting rights as he claims he is he would be advocating right now for the abolition of the filibuster but he's not doing that. He's allowing individuals like Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin to basically be the scapegoat here. Basically a rotating villain when in actuality the buck stops with him. He has his bully pulpit he is the president of the United States so the fact that he's done virtually nothing to actually move this issue forward and get the Senate to pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act which just passed a couple of weeks ago you know it speaks to the failure of his presidency if nothing is accomplished and it's not just that this is needed because Republicans and state legislatures across the country are suppressing the rights of people of color but on top of that they're going to gerrymander their way back to victory in 2022 and this power grab is going to last for a decade. They're using the US Census Bureau data to redraw district lines and they are already broadcasting the fact that they're going to redraw these districts to their advantage. They don't have to do much they just have the gerrymander a couple of seats and they have an easy path back to victory. So this is such a huge issue but it doesn't get one the coverage in media that it needs and two Democrats just aren't up to the challenge how Democrats are passing this right and that's good but Senate Democrats are just woefully incompetent and I don't necessarily think it's only incompetence I think that many of them don't want to pass this legislation even if they vocalize support for it because I mean being out of power might be easier it's less pressure it's easier to fundraise perhaps so all around I mean I'm merely speculating here right but something has to be done and if it's not done quickly then we lose our democracy further. We risk this authoritarian fall right fascistic extremist reactionary party taking control not just of congress but many state governments across the country if we don't have a new voting rights bill that takes effect nationally at the federal level so Democrats know what they need to do they know what the conclusion is after seeing the headlines you know around this this new law it's just a matter of will they actually do what they need to do to get stuff done the answer I think is probably no for kids and adults suffering severe allergies a single peanut or a single garden bee sting can be fatal that's why millions of Americans including my sister they rely on epipens they shoot life-saving drug epinephrum into the body that can make a difference between life and death if there's a severe allergic outbreak now these pens which are almost all manufactured by the same company my land pharmaceuticals have skyrocketed in price a pair used to cost about $100 that's just seven years ago in 2009 now they are setting families back as much as $600 this massive price hike has prompted several lawmakers to call for an investigation that segment was published on August 24th 2016 and the individual responsible for that price hike is heather brish the CEO of Milan now this individual isn't just the CEO of Milan she also happens to be the daughter of senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia now at the time when this news broke Joe Manchin actually had the audacity to defend his daughter and claim that contrary to what you're seeing she's actually really compassionate he said my daughter is my daughter with unconditional love and she's the most amazing person that I know he continued she's so compassionate and generous and how she's always lived her life yeah doesn't really seem like it the former West Virginia governor said that ever since brish has been at Milan and he's been in politics we made a point to keep those parts of our lives separate except everything that he said there is literally backwards his daughter is not compassionate because if she were compassionate she wouldn't have hiked up the price of this life-saving drug people may die because of what she did we don't have the numbers it hasn't been quantified to my knowledge but what she did she knew how catastrophic that could be but she did it anyway because she wanted to increase profits for her company and he says that you know when it comes to her life as the CEO of Milan and my life in politics we try to keep those things separate except that's not the case because executives at Milan donated a combined $180,000 to Joe Manchin so it's not separate there's a conflict of interest he's representing them as a donor and also because this is his daughter now in 2018 after he said that in 2016 he was asked about this during a debate between him and his Republican opponent and as you're going to see he totally sidestepped the question refused to answer your daughter Heather Bresch, Milan's CEO was grilled on Capitol Hill for that price spike you defended her and said the attacks on her salary of $19M were quote-unquote sensational records show Milan employees and executives have contributed over $180,000 to your campaign you also said the real problem was the convoluted system that drove up the price why Senator was Manchin justified why was Milan justified in charging $600 for a two-pack of life-saving drugs that cost about $30 to make first of all, Hoppe the system is broken it has been broken Patrick Morrissey helped break it because he profits more from it being broken then fixing it next of all I can't tell you on a publicly traded company how they are very very convincing Senator Manchin very very convincing now the reason why I'm talking about this again is because we have an update thanks to the phenomenal reporting of Ryan Grimm we now know that for sure his daughter Heather Breusch was directly involved with this scheme to hike up the price of EpiPens so he explains Heather Breusch, the former president and CEO of the drug maker Milan worked directly with the CEO of Pfizer to keep prices of the company's EpiPen product artificially high according to new documents released as part of an ongoing lawsuit the documents also show Breusch approving a scheme to force customers captured by the company's monopoly to purchase two EpiPens at once regardless of medical need the EpiPen is an auto-injectable device that injects epinephrine into the body and can be the difference between life or death for a person suffering a severe allergic reaction the documents were released as part of an ongoing antitrust suit in federal court in June, Judge Daniel Crabtree issued a summary judgment partially siding with Milan and partially siding with the plaintiffs meaning the case goes on last week the judge unsealed some of the documents underlying the plaintiff's case among the documents is an email sent on behalf of Breusch who is the daughter of Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia to her counterpart at Pfizer then CEO Ian Reed in the email sent in January of 2011 Breusch confirms a previous discussion with Reed in which she says that the two agreed that as part of a deal Pfizer would disinvest from its EpiPen competitor Adrienaclic eliminating its main competitor would then allow Milan to continue raising its prices in 2007 when Milan acquired the rights to market the drug from Merck by buying its specialty pharmaceutical subsidiary Day a two-pack cost less than $100 a tiny fraction of what it costs today the result of the deal with Merck was that Milan manufactured part of the EpiPen delivery system but not the medication itself while owning the brand name and the right to distribute the whole product the drug itself was produced by King Pharmaceuticals which manufactured it exclusively from Milan King in 2010 announced it would be purchased by Pfizer which was licensed to sell Adrienaclic an EpiPen competitor the previous year the deal between Pfizer and Milan led the former to withdraw its competitor from the market and partner with Milan on EpiPen locking down a monopoly following the deal with Pfizer Milan drove the price above $600 within five years meanwhile Gale Manchin, Breusch's mother lobbied states to require schools for an as the head of the National Association of State Boards of Education Gale Manchin was recently confirmed to serve as co-chair of the Federal Appalachian Regional Commission a government agency tasked with promoting economic development across the region's 13 states so this story isn't super surprising of course this is what his daughter did as the CEO of Milan these sorts of price fixing schemes this is actually a very common occurrence in the pharmaceutical world it's why we have to utilize antitrust laws and we need to get serious about nationalizing these pharmaceutical companies but really I'm sharing this information with you because I mean does it not really explain everything you need to know about Joe Manchin this entire family has been a blemish in America just awful a plague on America is basically blocking what little progress we might be able to make he doesn't support the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill that Bernie Sanders is pushing which would expand Medicare because his donors they don't like the idea of public insurance even being expanded a little bit he is against voting rights which allow republicans to continue to rig elections effectively in their states including voter suppression and gerrymandering I mean this man is a tool of the industry and it's not just that he's corrupt his daughter was a part of that his wife is a part of that they're all working together I'm assuming that he's still with his daughter's mother but if not this entire family it's like they're going out of their way to fuck over Americans why do we put up with this why do we put up with this it goes to show you that politicians are super comfortable CEOs are super comfortable they know there's not going to be any accountability legally for them and if there is it'll be a slap on the wrist so it's easier to just like do what's bad and pay the fine because you're going to rake in billions in profits and politicians they know that once they're in office that incumbency advantage that they have is truly almost magical and has done fuck all for the people of West Virginia and he keeps getting elected again and again and again and this is why nothing changes I mean this is truly disgusting the fact that he has a daughter in the pharmaceutical world when he's a lawmaker ended up itself is pretty gross but when you consider the fact that this company donated to his campaign I mean it's just it's so corrupt but all of this is legal now when it comes to the price fixing we'll see depending on the result of this case if they get away with it but my prediction would be that there's going to be basically no consequences for his daughter she should be in prison for doing this she should absolutely be in prison Joe Manchin should resign in shame but of course nothing is going to happen but at a minimum the best we can do is equip ourselves with knowledge it's just a matter of whether or not there's a motive to do that and you know I feel like people are just a little bit too comfortable and they've just accepted that corruption is the norm in American society as it relates to politics and business so they just let it happen but this really is not normal even if it's common this isn't normal and this shouldn't be allowed it shouldn't be acceptable but here we are now I would encourage you to read the full article because it is very very long and detailed so we didn't even scratch the surface but Ryan Grimm is very thorough there's also some email receipts that he shares so yeah you know check it out I don't think you're going to be too surprised but still I do think it's important that you know about this like you know where Joe Manchin is coming from his entire family is just terrible police unions across the country are essentially going to war in order to stop vaccine mandates from applying to police officers and Vice News has a report that is depressing but really not surprising in the slightest so Trone Dowd reports more US cops have died in the last year from COVID-19 than any other cause but they're still not getting vaccinated in fact they're suing to avoid it as cities around the country have begun to mandate vaccinations powerful unions like those in New York Illinois and Ohio say they're ready to fight the policies in court and some have already filed the paperwork law enforcement leaders aren't necessarily against the vaccine but argue the mandates impede on officers right to make medical decisions for themselves especially as members of unions are entitled to bargain for their conditions of employment the law however may not be on their side courts have already struck down some of the legal challenges ultimately forcing officers to get the life-saving shot oh no Patrick Lynch the president of New York's largest police union the police benevolent association said he's ready to file a lawsuit when the mayor's vaccine mandate is set to take effect late this month right now the NYPD's vaccination rate is hovering at around 47% that is terrible Chicago's fraternal order of police president John Katanzaro also alluded to legal action in a bizarre statement to the Chicago Sun Times quote we're in America god damn it Katanzaro told the outlet we don't want to be forced to do anything period this ain't Nazi fucking Germany three quarters of officers in Chicago weren't vaccinated as of May and cops in Wayne New Jersey briefly halted the police department's mandate because of a lawsuit filed by the local union but a state arbiter ruled this week that the township was within its right to enforce the mandate many of these unions aren't against the vaccine itself but they're determined to protect their members right to make their own medical decisions Lynch for example successfully lobbied earlier this year to make the vaccine to NYPD officers first in Dayton Ohio where city workers are being asked to either get vaccinated by September 20th or be subject to weekly tests the fraternal order of police said it's prepared to file a lawsuit against the city because it believes officers shouldn't have to foot the bill for testing in Tucson the police officers association said the city's mandate simply interferes with an officer's extremely complicated and deeply personal decision over the vaccine according to a facebook post from last month it's weird to me that all of these police unions are making the same argument well look we just want to protect union members right to personal medical autonomy except when it comes to a public health crisis a global pandemic you choosing to not get vaccinated that's not an individual choice your individual quote unquote choice here affects the entire health of the community when we're talking about highly COVID-19 and the delta variant I mean if you choose to not get vaccinated I mean you having to go to a hospital taking up an ICU bed that's in limited supply currently that affects everyone in your community so this isn't some personal decision but the union they're just looking out for their members originally they tried to give their police officers access to these vaccines immediately before anyone else and now they're trying to make sure that police officers can choose to opt out of these vaccine mandates but let me just say something real quick since we're talking about police officer unions when I talk about unionization on the left and the need for unionization in order to enhance the rights that workers have in the United States I'm absolutely excluding police unions police unions are bad they're way too powerful and we need to bust up police unions I am a union buster when it comes to police unions when it comes to unionization when it comes to work for workers in construction and retail and fast food I think that every single worker in the United States should have a union when it comes to police officers we got to break that up because these unions are absolutely tyrannical and I think it's part of the reason why so many cities are almost afraid of their police department I mean these departments they're supposed to serve their communities but it seems like they're little mini dictatorships who's lording over who they believe to be subjects I mean look at Bill de Blasio during Black Lives Matter when he was sucking up to police officers like he was totally whipped by them so this is unacceptable their argument is absolutely absurd and police unions are absolutely tyrannical having said that though the good news the silver lining here is that I don't think that there's much of an argument to be made legally here I think that mostly these claims are going to fail so they're trying to use the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 which basically says that these union members they have the right to negotiate the terms of their employment right and choosing to institute a mask or excuse me a vaccine mandate that leads to them losing their employment or their employment status getting terminated that obviously violates that except when it comes to a pandemic viruses and vaccine mandates the law actually is pretty clear and these vaccine mandates aren't new in the United States contrary to popular belief so legally it seems like this is doomed to fail in 1905 when smallpox was still a threat to the American public the Supreme Court definitively decided that states have the authority to enforce vaccination laws as they see fit the decision declared that a recently passed Cambridge, Massachusetts law which made turning down the vaccine finable offense was constitutional the case Jacobson versus Massachusetts has already been cited in a U.S. 7th court of appeals case earlier this month Ryan Klassen et al. versus the University of Indiana that challenged vaccine mandates when 8 students attending the University of Indiana filed a federal lawsuit against the school in June for mandating vaccines unless exempt for medical or religious reasons the court decided that the institution was within its right to require vaccination against COVID-19 because of the rules established in the 1905 case for one the university made an accommodating policy for those who don't want to get vaccinated regular testing and a mask mandate the judge also ruled that the right of institutions of learning to enforce their own rules of safety is well established quote health exams and vaccinations against other diseases are common requirements of higher education the decision reads vaccinations protect not only the vaccinated persons but also those who come into contact with them and at a university close contact is inevitable a federal judge in Arizona last month struck down a legal challenge just days after the Tucson police officers association filed a lawsuit over the county's vaccine mandate the judge ruled that while getting vaccinated is a personal choice the union failed to show how the mandate harms employees without some sort of exemption and so what I'm anticipating here with these cases is that you know they're going to apply the same standard that they applied to schools here to these uh police vaccine mandates which is good I think that police officers should be required to be vaccinated having an anti-vaxxer on the police force is a little bit worrying is it not I mean these are people who are supposed to protect their communities in theory right in theory not necessarily in practice but in theory so the fact that they're these like far right anti-vaxx extremists is really worrying and so if they don't want to get the vaccine and they end up quitting because of it adios I think that's perfectly fine I think that's a good result as many anti-vaxxers as we can weed out of police forces out of health care I think that is a net good for society these people do not belong in these sectors where they serve the public if they're refusing to take a vaccine that will reduce this devastating virus that is ravaging communities so I anticipate them to kind of use the same logic here as they did in the university cases but one thing that I kind of fear even right now it seems as if this is legally doomed to fail is that in the event one of these cases gets appealed all the way to the Supreme Court well we have a far right conservative super majority on the Supreme Court so they can easily overturn the president of former cases where they found you know a standard for vaccine mandates so who knows we'll have to wait and see but the mere fact that this is happening like the fact that police officers are protesting vaccine mandates and they're going to their unions to try to stop vaccine mandates it's truly like it says so much about them does it not anyone who refuses this life-saving vaccine that people in other countries are desperate to take it goes to show you that they're just they're not good people they're misinformed and they're reactionary and sometimes you have to compel people to do things that are good for the health of their community and this is no different here vaccine mandates are good not just good for police officers but good for every single job in America because I don't believe that workers in America should be dealing with non-stop plague and disease so vaccine mandates protect workers and if you don't support vaccine mandates you don't support workers so yeah I'll leave that there so last week a man from British Columbia went viral when he decided to pee on the floor in a restaurant when the workers asked him to put on a mask so it seems like this week anti-maskers saw what he did and they saw the commentary surrounding that viral event and they thought you know what we can actually out do that we can get crazier than that and here we are so I don't know what next week is going to bring in the anti-mass saga that we're seeing around the world but this week we have this entry from an anti-mass Karen who decided to cough on people in their faces in a grocery store again during a global pandemic that's a excuse me I'm coming through guys you're so hey whatever you're such a sheep why don't you have a mask on because I don't need to have one on I'm not sick and neither are you okay but you don't have to be coughing you don't know who's sick or not it's my allergies oh you got yeah and so two years ago before anybody started talking about COVID you were okay with that though going out not knowing you were sick right you don't know anything about my health I don't she's coughing at me I have my allergies and she got all freaked out because I'm coughing no she's coughing you don't know and she just said I don't know anything about her health you don't know anything about my health maybe I have a medical okay everybody okay to cough on someone during a pandemic that is bioterrorism that woman is a bioterrorist so this took place in Nebraska she knew that she was being filmed and she was so bold so brave that she thought you know what I'm better than these masks what I do you know it doesn't matter there's going to be no consequences for my actions so I'm literally going to cough in people's faces with a big smile on my face wow now you're probably thinking this lady is unreal there's no way it's going to get worse than her actually hold on because that lady is going to look sane in comparison to this man I'm sure that you've seen this by now but there was a man who was intoxicated and he's an anti-masker he was literally growling that's where we're at like I keep joking about how we're going to reach a state where people are literally shitting themselves and frothing at the mouth when they're asked to put on a mask but it seems like we're actually like that's going to happen like my anti-mask bingo is going to be filled in I just just watch sit down now sit sit down you'll find it really sorry both but that's what they think of America disgrace deny disgrace great really? sir are you really that shocked you were growling on the airplane you were growling I just I don't know what to say folks what do you even say to that how do you react to that like if you're on an airplane or you're on a bus and you see someone literally growling what do you even do my instinct would be to flee get the hell out of there because I would think of a zombie apocalypse and that's patient zero I just I don't know what to do folks what is wrong with the world I just I don't know what to say now for some additional context Ross stories John Wright explains according to fellow passenger Dennis Bush who filmed the meltdown it began when the man yelled at a woman of Asian ethnicity telling her to sit down while she was standing up to deal with a back issue SLC's Fox affiliate reported he then told flight attendants that the woman and the person she was with didn't belong here the station reported after asking him to calm down the man went into a complete meltdown of racist sexist and belligerent comments culminating in his arrest at the gate Bush went on Instagram we were lucky to have such a well-trained crew who kept their cool throughout the flight so it seems like this is kind of like a combination of multiple things I don't think you can officially file this under anti-maskers as a category I think it's part anti-masker because of what he was doing with his mask but also it's him just being like super drunk and super racist and just you know wanting to pickle fight with someone either way I mean the viral videos that we're seeing it truly it has me genuinely perplexed like as a fellow human being like like here's a question that I want to pose to viewers of the humanist report and I'm genuinely like curious to know what you all are going to say here like is it the case that Americans have always been this stupid human beings have always been this stupid but we only are learning about how stupid some people are because everyone has cell phones with cameras on them now or are we actually literally getting dumb as time goes on I think it's probably a combination of both I feel like in many ways we are devolving as a species when you see issues like a global pandemic become politicized or medicine become politicized I just can't not think that as a species our standards are like deteriorating like we're becoming dumber, more reactionary more conspiratorial I don't know if this has anything to do with you know the rise of social media and Facebook but either way I would love to like go a few hundred years into the future assuming human beings survive and read what the historians say about like this moment insane people are because this is this is the stuff that makes me feel misanthropic and I am a humanist but I mean there are little like misanthropic instincts that I feel bubble up whenever I watch things like this so either way let me know what you think about this I feel like it's a combination of both stupidity and just visibility of these things but I don't know anymore I genuinely I'm at a loss so far every preliminary report that I've seen about drones has always pointed to the same conclusion that the US is use of drones in countries like Pakistan Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq it's been catastrophic we're not hitting enemy combatants we are hitting civilians sometimes most of the time and it's really difficult to quantify the civilian casualties here but one organization tried and even if they don't necessarily have a precise number they confirm what we all kind of expected that the results here of our drone use in these countries which is illegal under international law by the way has absolutely been devastating thousands and thousands and thousands of innocent civilians have died because of US drones since 9-11 so for more of this we go to Kenny Stansel explains air strikes conducted by the United States have killed between 22,000 and 48,000 civilians since September 11th 2001 according to a report published Monday by Air Wars a military watchdog that monitors and seeks to reduce civilian harm in violent conflict zones the new analysis released ahead of the 20th anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks and the retaliatory launch of the so-called war on terror came just days after a US drone strike killed at least 10 members of a single family in Kabul amid the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan most media accounts point out that more than 7,000 US service members have died in post 9-11 wars but only some go on to state the massive civilian death toll and almost exclusively in generalities researchers lamented while Brown University's cost of war project estimates that over 387,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the war on terror Air Wars sought to answer a specific question how many civilians have likely been killed by US air strikes in the last 20 years the answer Air Wars found is at least 22,679 and potentially as many as 48,308 civilians acknowledging the imprecision of their estimate the group noted that the gap between those two figures reflects the many unknowns when it comes to civilian harm in war the Pentagon has declared a minimum of 91,340 air strikes in Afghanistan Iraq, Libya, Pakistan Somalia, Syria and Yemen 7 countries the United States military invaded or assaulted with bombs or drones in the past 20 years notable peaks occurred during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and between 2015 and 2017 the height of the military offensive against ISIS in Iraq, Syria and Libya given the dubious nature of data supplied by the US military which notoriously undercount civilian fatalities Air Wars gathered together every reliable assessment of direct civilian harm caused by US actions to construct a data set that includes information from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism Iraq body count, the nation the United Nations assistance mission in Afghanistan and their own previous studies yeah there's a lot to take in after after hearing this none of this is surprising to me but to just get like a sense of the scale of the destruction that our drones have caused not necessarily shocking at all it's still really difficult to digest it's nauseating hearing this number even if we interpret this as charitably as we possibly can and we assume it's the lower estimate 22,000 lives lost due to our drone civilians not enemy combatants but civilians who are innocent that is truly it's it's gut wrenching to think about 22,000 families know somebody who died because of our drones so if you multiply that by like four assuming each person who was killed knew at least four people like 100,000 people have this story yeah you know the United States government one of their drones killed someone I know my uncle my auntie and do they not think that this is radicalizing people further by the way these drone strikes are illegal and I said that at the beginning of this video but I really think it's worth saying that again these violate the territorial integrity and sovereignty of these countries courts in Pakistan have basically demanded that the US leave but the United States government hasn't complied and Pakistan is an ally but yet we're technically invading them and in their backyard we are terrorizing citizens it's just honestly shocking that this has been going on for so long and there's not that much outrage among the American public I know that there's like war fatigue and we're all exhausted from it but you can't tune out when it comes to things like this if some other country like Mexico or Canada was doing drone strikes in our backyard if they're flying over Oregon or Texas or Louisiana we would never allow that to happen but we do it in other countries because we assume that these lives are less meaningful than ours they have less value than ours but these are human beings they might dress differently and speak a different language than you they might have a different culture than us they might have a different skin color than you these are human beings like every single one of us they have aspirations they love their family and they don't deserve this so you know there should be justice but the sad part about this story is there never will be justice there's not going to be anyone held accountable not a single US official involved here is going to see a day in prison the biggest war criminals in the history of our country they get away scot-free we're not a signatory to the international criminal court there's nobody who's going to hold us accountable because we're the most powerful country in the world so we can do things like this get away with it and do it again because leaders know there's there's nothing that anyone can do to stop them now some of the statistics that I'm about to say here we're already touched on but I just want to go over this again as we look at some additional charge provided by air wars because these are truly stunning so 2003 was the deadliest year for the war on terror this was a mention but this number of 5,500 civilians killed in 2003 that is truly insane that's one year now the second deadliest year was in 2017 with nearly 5,000 civilian deaths mostly by coalition bombings in Iraq and Syria also they state that 97% of all civilian deaths took place in Iraq Afghanistan and Syria so I do want to play a video released by air wars where they kind of summarize their findings but rather than just like throwing a bunch of numbers and data at you they also provide you with some human faces here to remind you that this isn't just like a report about numbers we're talking about real lives here real pain real suffering yeah so massive credit to air wars here for trying to quantify what is seemingly impossible to quantify I think they did the best that they could and what they found out here is truly gut wrenching but not necessarily surprising so yeah there's no rosy takeaway you know we're out of Afghanistan now but again there's going to be no accountability you know the worst defenders here are bush Obama and Trump seems like Joe Biden according to multiple reports has scaled down drones but I mean 10 people killed in Afghanistan by a US drone under Joe Biden's watch so if I add my way every single US president would immediately go from serving to a full on trial for crimes against humanity because they're all involved here every single one of their hands ever since the war on terror began so it's just I'm exhausted talking about this because I don't know what to say you know there's nothing that I can say that makes the situation better it's just disgusting and the best thing that we can do as individuals who you know has a government that's gone rogue that doesn't listen to us you know that has a military that's controlled by private industry essentially you know the best that we can do to get this information and make Americans aware about it so they know about the war crimes that we're committing because make no mistake about it these are war crimes so I actually want to take some time to do something a bit different in this segment I want to read a few headlines to you that I've collected over the course of the last month or so and we're not really going to go too deep into any one of these articles but if you listen to these headlines and you kind of they kind of paint a really really broad and grim picture for humanity all of these headlines are about climate change so the first is from The Guardian published on August 5th scientists spot warning signs of Gulfstream collapse a shutdown would have devastating global impacts and must not be allowed to happen researchers say quote the science of destabilization being visible already is something that I wouldn't have expected and that I find scary said Nicholas Bowers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany who did the research it's something you just can't allow to happen from common dreams published August 25th unprecedented Madagascar on verge of world's first climate fueled famine quote these people have done nothing to contribute to climate change said one UN official they don't burn fossil fuels and yet they are bearing the brunt of climate change the United Nations estimates that 30,000 people in the country are facing level five food insecurity defined as a catastrophe or famine according to the integrated food security phase classification quote some 30% of global tree species at risk of extinction report published in Reuters on September 1st according to the state of the world's trees report 17,500 tree species some 30% of the total are at risk of extinction while 40 species have fewer than 50 individuals left in the wild for outdoor workers California is becoming unbreathable as huge fires become the catastrophic new norm vast numbers of low wage workers are exposed to ever higher levels of toxins published by the nation on September 3rd California has the toughest air quality and emission standards in the country yet the huge fires which experts believe are creating such scarification that it will take the land half a century to recover are releasing more CO2 in the atmosphere than all of the state's power plants and more than tens of millions of vehicles air pollution is slashing years off the lives of billions report fines dirty air is a far greater killer than smoking car crashes or HIV and AIDS with coal burning the leading cause the average global citizen loses 2.2 years of life with today's levels of air pollution and if anything changes that adds up to 17 billion lost years from common dreams published on September 4th red list of threatened species a grim tally of those facing extinction of the 138,374 species assessed by the international union for the conservation of nature for its survival watch list more than 38,000 are now at risk of extinction as the destructive impact of human activity on our planet deepens a study published in science links Texas cold wave in February to anthropogenic climate change specifically Arctic heat which is warming at twice the global average organs heatwave death toll reaches 107 in mass casualty event the fatal victims of the heat wave ranged in age from 37 to 97 published in ABC news on July 7th quote how climate change helped make hurricane Ida one of Louisiana's worst unusually high temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico are like stepping on the accelerator a scientist says published in the Washington Post on August 30th nearly one in three Americans experienced a weather disaster this summer climate change has turbocharged severe storms fires hurricanes coastal storms and floods threatening millions also published by the Washington Post on September 4th nearly half the world's children at extremely high risk for facing effects of climate crisis report finds virtually no child's life will be unaffected by the climate emergency said the president of UNICEF published in common dreams on August 20th out of control Brazilian Amazon deforestation hits highest level in a decade quote at this rate we will not be able to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius a target defined in the Paris climate agreement said the conservation institute Amazon so every single one of those headlines from no more than a month or so ago it tells us a really important story we're doomed if we don't take action and I don't want to be overly hyperbolic I don't want to sound alarmist but this is serious we can't keep thinking that as human beings our species is invincible because it's not these last couple of years proved that we are not invincible and we're not always going to be here and what we're allowing to happen right now is the one habitable planet that we know of is slipping out of our hands and we're just going on about our days as if we're not on the cusp of a major apocalypse that might literally drive us towards extinction we can't keep pretending that this issue is going to work itself out and eventually it's going to get so bad that human beings they're forced to take action it's already bad if that was going to happen it would have already happened over the course of the last couple of years so what I want people to understand from these headlines is that so many things are happening at once the longer that we wait the more that these issues caused by anthropogenic climate change compounds it gets worse and worse and worse and each issue created by anthropogenic climate change causes ripple effects things that we don't even know will happen because of climate change are already in effect to happen we don't know the full scale of the destruction that will be caused by ocean acidification the certification we don't know how this is going to affect us culturally and socially when areas of the world become uninhabitable the refugee crises that is inevitably going to catalyze is going to lead to new extremist political factions lead to a rise in fascism most likely and at the end of the day this is going to lead to us slowly but surely losing the only home that we know we can't just keep sitting idly by hoping that the climate issue will work itself out we need action and this is going to be our home only so long as we fight for it so if there's ever been a time to wake up and get involved that time is right now I'd argue that that time was a decade ago or two decades ago but right now more than ever remaining complacent being ambivalent is just not an option it's a species if we want to save other species not just human beings because you know I don't want to be overly anthropocentric we have to do something right now remaining silent is no longer an option it's just not well that is everything hopefully you enjoyed the show folks I will see you all in two weeks if you'd like to support the show and join the independent progressive media evolution you can do so by going to or by clicking join any one of our youtube videos I really really appreciate everyone who chooses to support the show monetarily but if you're unable to do that you can really make a huge difference by just watching our videos and also feeding the algorithm by commenting on our videos doing a thumbs up even if you just want to type in a comment for the algorithm it's really funny and great so yeah folks that's everything I will see you all hopefully in a couple of weeks or hopefully when I'm refreshed regardless if I'm refreshed or not I'll see you in a couple of weeks but I'm going to take a week off to celebrate my anniversary and yeah I hope you all have have a great time in the meanwhile anyways I'll see you next week take care everyone my name is Mike Pierretto this has been The Humanist Report