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Oct. 26, 2024 - System Update - Glenn Greenwald
01:20:24
Meltdown Over Non-Endorsements From WaPo & LA Times; Why Can't The U.S. Count Votes In One Night? Former Addict Saved By Mission To Rescue Street Dogs

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Good evening.
It's Friday, October 25th.
Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7pm Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight...
On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times announced that it would refrain from issuing an endorsement in the presidential election, meaning that they would not instruct their readers to vote for Kamala Harris.
Today, the Washington Post followed suit.
In both papers, top editors were prepared to issue endorsements of Kamala.
They had the draft written.
But the owners of each paper, a family that runs the LA Times and then Jeff Bezos of the Washington Post, decided that the paper should not explicitly choose sides in the 2024 election by telling people for whom they should vote.
To say that liberal elites were enraged by this news and have gone into a spiraling meltdown of hysteria and betrayal is to understate the case.
A handful of them at each paper, some of these journalists and editors actually resigned in protest, including one of the longest time and most influential neocons, Robert Kagan, who resigned today from the Washington Post.
If you don't know who he is, he has been Bill Kristol's writing partner for three decades.
He's the founder, the co-founder with Kristol of the neocon advocacy group in the 1990s called Project for a New America, where they architected and advocated countless U.S. awards in the Middle East.
And he is also the husband of the United States' effective ruler of Ukraine, Victoria Nuland.
Unsurprisingly, yet notably, it is these kinds of warmongers, the Dick Cheney's and Bill Kristol's and Robert Kagan's, who are the most passionate about electing Kamala and defeating Donald Trump.
And Kagan thus rage quit today over what he viewed as the Post's supreme betrayal and not endorsing his candidate, Kamala Harris.
But in these events and in the reactions to them, one finds many important revelations about the state of our corporate media, the real function they are expected to perform now, and the genuine mania and hysteria now consuming the elite liberal class as polls become increasingly discouraging for them.
Yes, I will confess there is great entertainment value in taking a look at all of this, all of this hysterical media reaction, and we will not deny that to ourselves nor to you.
But the events of the last couple days are really a very clear mirror about how these people think and what they expect and what they believe the media is now for.
So we will hold that mirror up to them and to these events for educated purposes as well as the entertainment.
Then it receives way too little attention that the United States, virtually alone in the democratic world, is utterly incapable of counting all the votes cast on election day and releasing a full, complete, and reliable tally that night.
Increasingly, in fact, it takes the United States and various states within the country, not just days, but even weeks and sometimes months, to count all of the ballots cast, all while most countries in the democratic world, including ones far less rich and far less technologically advanced than the including ones far less rich and far less technologically advanced than the United States, reliably count all votes and announce the results on election day, just a few hours after the It's an expectation.
Nobody would even think it would be a different way.
Now, as American officials in various states again warn this year that they will be unable to count all votes for many days after what is called Election Day, the question again arises, what explains this unique inability?
In the United States, especially given how much distrust and doubt in the integrity of the electoral process this failure understandably engenders.
And then finally, Niall Harbison is a fascinating and I think inspiring figure.
The Irish-born 44-year-old had a difficult life of a lot of childhood trauma that led to alcoholism and addiction in his later life, an increasingly common story in the modern Western world.
But then he found a mission, a reason to live, a spiritual connection.
Rescuing, caring for, and saving as many street dogs as he possibly can in Thailand, the country where he now lives.
As is usually true of people devoted to animal rescue, the dogs that he has saved have done at least as much to save Harbison in his life as he has done to save Harbison.
There's, he has built an impressive and growing dog rescue project, and we'll speak to him about that, and what led him to this noble mission, the role it has played in saving him from the various demons that have long plagued him, and some of the inspiring stories that he's encountered.
Not just an interesting way, but also a nicely uplifting way to end the show and to end the week.
Before we get to all of that, we have a few programming notes.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
I have to admit that I have never really understood why it is that journalistic outlets are ones that claim to be involved in a principally journalistic function every two years prior to an election issue their instructions for how people ought to vote.
They endorse particular candidates the way, say, an activist group would or a donor group would.
And by doing so, in my view, they attach themselves to that politician so that if that person wins, there's some sort of subconscious, at least, desire to see them succeed because you are the one who encouraged people to go and vote for them.
You've kind of placed yourself on their side.
And I think placing yourself on the side of a politician so explicitly So blatantly is, at the very least, unjournalistic.
It has no journalistic function to me.
And one could even argue that it's anti-journalistic, that it really is a contradiction of what is supposed to be the journalistic function, which is holding all powerful parties account, regardless of which side they are or who they are.
But it has become commonplace and expectation that major media outlets, especially the nation's largest newspapers as well as local newspapers, especially before a presidential election, endorse the candidate that they want to see win the national election.
And for papers like the New York Times and the Washington Post and the LA Times, it's basically automatic that they endorse the candidate who is representing the Democratic Party.
You have to go back many, many years For you to find the Washington Post endorsing a Republican candidate.
Since at least 2004, it's been John Kerry, Obama, Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden.
And there was obviously an expectation that the Washington Post, like the New York Times has already done, would come out and announce that it was imperative that the nation elect Kamala Harris and reject Donald Trump.
And yet that's not what the Washington Post has decided to do.
Apparently, the top editors of the Washington Post were all ready to do what exactly was expected of them.
They actually drafted an endorsement of Kamala Harris that they were preparing to publish within the next few days.
And by all reports, the owner of the Washington Post, the person who bought it for $250 million more than a decade ago back in 2013, Amazon co-founder and multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos, overrode that decision and decided that the newspaper should not Issue endorsements, not just this year, but for all future elections.
Now, the Washington Post, after Bezos bought the paper, did endorse.
In 2016, they endorsed the election of Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump.
They then endorsed, in 2020, Joe Biden over Trump.
Donald Trump and so the expectation was that they would endorse Kamala Harris over Donald Trump and yet Bezos intervened and said he thought it inappropriate for newspapers that are expected to be trustworthy to all sides of the political spectrum to continuously announce that they were supporting the Democratic Party candidate.
Here from the Washington Post today is the leadership of the Post.
Namely, a note from the publisher who runs the paper for Jeff Bezos announcing why it is that they have made this decision.
A note from the publisher.
Quote, As our editorial board wrote in 1960, The election where John Kennedy was running against Richard Nixon and obviously coastal elites were petrified of a Nixon presidency, very much wanted JFK to win.
And when the Washington Post refused to endorse in that race, as they had previously done, this is what they explained.
Quote, the Washington Post has not, quote, endorsed either candidate in the presidential campaign.
That is in our tradition and accords with our action in five of the last six elections.
The unusual circumstances of the 1952 election led us to make an exception when we endorsed General Eisenhower prior to the nominating conventions and reiterated our endorsement during the campaign.
In light of the hindsight, we retained the view that the arguments for his nomination and election were compelling.
But hindsight has also convinced us that it might have been wiser for an independent newspaper in the nation's capital to have avoided formal endorsement.
We recognize that this will be read in a range of views, including as a task for an endorsement of one candidate, or as a condemnation of another, or as an abdication of our responsibility.
This is inevitable, but we don't see it that way.
Our job at the Washington Post is to provide through the newsroom nonpartisan news for all Americans and thought-provoking reported views from our opinion team to help our readers make up their own minds.
Most of all, our job as a newspaper of the capital city of the most important country in the world is to be independent, and that is what we are and will be.
Now, there's obviously a hugely disingenuous component to the Washington Post decision, which is everybody knows exactly what the Washington Post wants to happen in the 2024 election.
Everyone knows that the Washington Post wants Kamala Harris to win and Donald Trump to lose.
It's reflected in everything they say and do.
I don't think they have a single pro-Trump op-ed columnist on their staff, just as the New York Times does not.
I believe every op-ed writer on that staff, maybe with the exception of one at the Post, Mark Thiessen, none at the New York Times, are supporters of Kamala Harris or at least are neutral.
But there's almost no pro-Trump representation in this because obviously the Washington Post, being a newspaper composed of coastal liberals from the same set of nine or ten elite colleges, In a culture of American liberalism catering to American liberals wants the Democratic Party to win.
That's why they've endorsed the Democratic candidate for the last 25 years.
So this idea that, oh, we're independent and we don't want to choose sides is, I suppose, valid for as long as it goes, which is not very far.
But nonetheless, I think it's a very valid and probably superior view to say that why are we as a newspaper endorsing a candidate or telling people how to vote?
We should give them all the information we believe was accurate about everyone running and then leave it up to the voters to make up their own minds.
I think that's a very valid perspective even if their biases are obvious.
The Washington Post itself published a news story about what was going on inside the Washington Post from today.
And the headline was, the Washington Post says it will not endorse a candidate for president.
Quote, publisher William Lewis explained the decision as a return to the newspaper's roots.
An endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published, according to two sources briefed on the sequence of events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The decision to no longer publish presidential announcements was made by the Post owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
This was a Washington Post decision to not endorse...
And I would refer you to the publisher's statement in full, said the Chief Communication Officer Kathy Baird.
Now, to say this did not go over well with pretty much every single person in the liberal sector of the corporate media, which is almost all of them, and liberal operatives and Democratic Party officials in Washington, is to wildly understate the case.
Marty Barron was the longtime Washington Post editor, and prior to that, he led the Boston Globe, including in its Pulitzer winning investigation, into the cover-up of molestation inside the Catholic Church, which became the subject of an award-winning film called Spotlight.
And he then went to the Washington Post, where he ran the Post for many years, and he was indignant over what he saw as an abdication of the journalistic responsibility to tell voters how to vote.
Here from the Boston Globe, the headline, former Washington Post editor Marty Baron slams newspaper for not making presidential endorsement.
Quote, this is cowardice with democracy as its casualty Barron, also the former editor of the Boston Globe, wrote on Acts, quote, Now, there's so many things to dissect there about that self-serving,
self-glorifying depiction of That he offers of himself and the Washington Post and the U.S. corporate media in general as being so brave.
What kind of bravery would be required for the Washington Post to do what it always does every four years, which is endorse the Democratic president?
And the idea that somehow Donald Trump has intimidated Jeff Bezos, on whom the U.S. security state relies through Amazon for a whole variety of crucial contracts, One of the two or three richest men on the planet,
that somehow Trump's going to say, oh look, I intimidated Jeff Bezos, and that it's some kind of act of important courage for the Washington Post to have done what everybody expected them to do, what every major newspaper in the United States routinely does, ritualistically, which is endorse the Democratic press, is so deceitful, so self-glorifying.
But even worse is this notion that somehow democracy is a casualty of a newspaper's decision to try and remain as neutral as possible, as though democracy depends upon American voters being guided by their superiors, by these newspaper editors and owners, to tell them how to vote.
And without that, democracy can't possibly survive because then people will be left on their own to make their own choices.
which is very much how these people see their role in society.
They just don't usually say it quite as explicitly, but they're so enraged at what's happening.
And I think a part of this is this growing desperation in the face of not very encouraging polling data that continues to emerge, that's certainly not dispositive in the sense that it proves Kamala will lose and Trump will win, but certainly continues to undercut a lot of the optimism that Democrats but certainly continues to undercut a lot of the optimism that Democrats had weeks and a couple of months ago as we've gone over last night, which is why they're resorting to the desperation of Trump is
And a lot of this is based on this idea that Trump is Adolf Hitler and it's the moral duty of every newspaper to stand in defense of American democracy by constemming Trump.
Now, the other aspect that's just so delusional about this perspective is that they continue not to understand the extent to which Americans in large, large numbers hate these newspapers. large numbers hate these newspapers.
Distrust these newspapers.
Scorn these newspapers.
Believe that they deliberately lie in order to advance their own political agenda.
Do you think there's huge numbers of undecided voters in Pennsylvania and Michigan and Arizona and Nevada and North Carolina and Georgia waiting on edge to have the Washington Post of all outlets tell them who to vote for?
And that somehow this is some great loss because now the Washington Post, the people in this country don't get the benefit of hearing the Washington Post tell them how to think and how to behave as if anybody cares what the Washington Post even thinks.
But these people live in this completely self-contained world, totally self-delusional.
Where they feed themselves these glorifying narratives about the role of newspapers and their feisty and courageous defense of democracy which means endorsing the Democratic Party candidate in every election and the quote-unquote failure or refusal of the Washington Post and as you'll see the LA Times to fulfill their role Is something that they cannot contain.
I mean, the amount of psychotic responses by very recognizable names is almost hard to express.
Now, here from Semaphore, which is just another new digital outlet, the headline was, Editor Resign, Subscribers Cancel as Washington Post's Non-Endorsement Prompts Crisis at Jeff Bezos' paper.
Quote, the first prominent journalist, editor-at-large Robert Kagan, resigned Friday in response to the decision Semaphore first reported, but there may be more, quote, people are shocked, furious, surprised at an editorial board member, citing internal discussions around resignation, quote, if you don't have the balls to own a newspaper, then don't.
I mean, if this person is so offended, At what the Washington Post did and accusing Jeff Bezos of lacking balls, what does it say about them that they're unwilling to object to raise their voice in defense of democracy and against fascism and the new Adolf Hitler on the horizon if they're not even willing to object under their own name, instead hiding behind the anonymity?
The article goes on, quote, members of the Post editorial board were taken The board had drafted an endorsement of Harris earlier this month, which was sent to the paper's owner, Jeff Bezos.
On Friday, NPR reported that an opinion staff learned the news at a tense meeting.
Shortly before Lewis' announcement, one person familiar with the figures told Semaphore that the decision already seemed to be impacting subscriptions.
In the last 24 hours, ending Friday afternoon, about 2,000 subscribers canceled their subscription.
An unusually high number, an employee said.
What does it say about people who subscribe to the Washington Post and then cancel the minute the Washington Post refuses to endorse Kamala Harris?
Generally, the reason you're supposed to read a newspaper is to have access to the reporting to understand what's going on in the world.
Not because you expect them to be an activist group on behalf of your ideology or political party, but of course that's exactly what the expectation now is of all of these papers who cater to a very specific Political camp and an ideological faction, generally just affluent, highly educated people who live on the East and West Coast who support the Democratic Party almost entirely.
That's the readers of The New York Times and The Washington Post, and they're not subscribing because they want to learn about the world.
They're subscribing almost the way you donate to a group with a cause that you support.
If you want to prioritize gun rights, you're going to give to the NRA. If you believe in abortion rights, you're going to give to Planned Parenthood.
If you believe in the Democratic Party, you're going to give to the Washington Post and the New York Times in the minute that either of them and any of them fail to advance your agenda, you're going to pull your money back because you're not actually reading them to learn anything.
You don't really want them to do reporting.
You want them to be activists on behalf of your candidate.
And because the Washington Post, in this case, at least explicitly decided this year not to, You have all these liberal journalists demanding that everybody cancel their subscriptions.
The article goes on, quote, another person who has seen the numbers downplayed them, saying the rate of cancellation Friday was, quote, not statistically significant.
Which is, I'm sure, what's going to happen.
You're going to have a lot of media melodrama over this, but people don't follow and listen to what liberal pundits tell them to do.
Here is the former Obama National Security Advisor and the current Biden White House official Susan Rice.
Here's how she reacted today upon this announcement that the Washington Post would not be endorsing, quote, so much for democracy dies in darkness.
This is the most hypocritical chicken shit move from a publication that is supposed to hold people in power to account.
Again, where would this idea come from that it's somehow courageous to endorse Kamala Harris and cowardly not to?
And yes, newspapers are supposed to hold the powerful to account.
Right now, the powerful are the people occupying the White House, such Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
And what they're angry about isn't the Washington Post's failure to hold Kamala Harris to account.
They're angry at the Washington Post's refusal to cheerlead for Kamala Harris openly, explicitly in this election because that is what their actual expectation of media outlets are.
Is not to inform the world, not to do reporting, not to hold powerful people accountable, but to do everything possible to help the Democratic Party win and to defeat Trump.
That really is what they believe is the overarching primary moral duty and function of the corporate media.
A purely partisan activist entity as they see it.
And because the Washington Post decided to keep a little bit of a pretense of being a neutral journalistic outlet, they're enraged because they don't think that's what journalism is supposed to be about.
It's supposed to be about helping the Democratic Party vanquish Donald Trump.
Speaking of people who believe that, Brian Stelter, who was on CNN and then got fired from CNN and is now back on CNN, here is what he said in his reaction today.
A member of the Washington Post editorial department tells me Jeff Bezos' decision not to endorse is an outrageous abdication of responsibility.
What abdication of responsibility?
To tell voters to vote for Kamala Harris?
That's the responsibility of journalists and newspapers?
He went on, quote, democracy doesn't die in darkness.
It dies when people anticipatorily consent to a fascist whim.
They're trying to create this narrative that the reason Jeff Bezos didn't allow the Washington Post to endorse Kamala Harris is because he's so petrified of the concentration camps Donald Trump is about to build And the Nazism and tyranny that's about to descend on our country, if Trump wins, that he's trying to curry favor with Donald Trump by not allowing his newspaper.
Imagine thinking that that's what Jeff Bezos' thought process is.
The only people who think that tyranny is on the horizon, that Donald Trump is going to build camps, Our insane liberal pundits who listen to MSNBC or read the New York Times op-ed page today.
The rest of the world doesn't actually believe that, doesn't think that way, as polling overwhelmingly shows.
Just a little bit more of this kind of reaction here from Hank Hoffman.
And then here's how he responded, fuck the fucking cowardly Washington Post.
Obeying in advance the post cowardly plutocratic owners talking about you, Jeff Bezos, lick the boots of Donald Trump, traitors to a free press and a free country, all because they wouldn't cheerlead for Kamala Harris.
Here is the former actor, Mark Hamill, who appeared in some Star Wars films and now is a very vocal Democratic activist, a crazy liberal resistance freak on Twitter.
Here's what he said.
Just canceled the newspaper that told us, quote, democracy dies in darkness.
Hashtag boycott the Washington Post.
And this is very representative of the sort of reaction here, by the way, as he attached his cancellation notice to his tweet.
We're sorry to see you go.
And it's his cancellation notice to the Washington Post because they didn't do what he thinks they ought to do, the function they ought to serve, which is cheerlead for the Democratic Party.
The always sober Keith Olbermann added, democracy dies in the Washington Post.
They're all playing on this.
Phrase that the Washington Post adopted right at the start of the Trump presidency, democracy dies in darkness.
Here is John Ralston, who's a journalist in Nevada.
Journalism dies in darkness.
As always, they have the same script they read from.
They're just like a hive mind.
Such complete groupthink.
Here's Congressman Ted Lieu, the congressman from California, quote, the first step toward fascism is when the free press cowers in fear.
Does it seem to you like the media is afraid of Donald Trump, is afraid of reporting negatively on Donald Trump?
Does the corporate media do anything else in this country besides spend every day denouncing Trump as a fascist and a liar and as a Hitler figure?
Does it seem like media outlets are hiding in the corner, petrified of Donald Trump?
Here's Molly Young Fast, Democracy Dies in the Sunlight.
Here's Joan Walsh, the former editor-in-chief of Salon.com when I was there.
She was my colleague for a long time.
She now writes for The Nation.
She's a fanatical Democratic partisan, and this is what she wrote.
She wrote, and this is hilarious, I think.
She wrote, I just canceled my subscription to the Washington Post.
You should, too.
And you can see it went pretty viral.
Almost 2,000 retweets, 9,000 likes, probably more now.
This was, in fact, at 1.14 p.m., so it's much more now.
So she's saying, you should also cancel the...
Your subscription to the Washington Post for failing to do what they're supposed to do.
And then someone in response said to her, a more effective protest, given that it's Jeff Bezos who did this, would be for everyone to stop shopping on Amazon.
And then Joan Walsh said in response, that's much harder, but I'll consider it.
So in other words, look, I want to do everything possible to stop fascism and the new Adolf Hitler from taking power, so I'll cancel my Washington Post subscription.
And when someone said to her, hey, maybe you should also boycott Amazon, she's like, I'm not going to miss my shows on Amazon Prime.
Just an anger of this.
I'm not going to stop shopping on Amazon.
That's way too hard.
I'll click a button and cancel my subscription.
I'm going to stay away from Amazon and all the awesome things it has to offer.
Obviously, if you really believed anything that you were saying, that this Donald Trump was Adolf Hitler, that Jeff Bezos was helping him get elected, I think you'd be willing to sacrifice the shows you love to watch on Amazon Prime and the great discounts you get by shopping on Amazon.
But that's...
A little bit too hard even when it comes to battling fascism.
Now, let's just remind everybody, Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post in August of 2013.
That's more than a decade ago.
The Washington Post to be sold to Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.
That was the headline in the Washington Post itself.
And yet, as I said, since then, The Washington Post endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016, even when Donald Trump won, and then Joe Biden in 2020 when he was running against Trump.
And I think Jeff Bezos ended up okay.
I don't believe he's been put in any camps.
I don't think he lost any contracts, Amazon contracts with the CIA or the Pentagon.
I don't recall any of his wealth being seized by Donald Trump with no due process as punishment for having endorsed Trump.
Trump's opponents.
But this is what I'm saying.
They have really talked themselves into this frenzy because they only, you have to realize that these liberal journalists who work at New York Times and MSNBC and CNN, they only talk to and amongst each other and for each other.
And so I know a lot of people think, no, they don't really believe this.
They're cynically pretending.
No, they really do believe it.
If you immerse yourself enough in a particular culture with a certain set of orthodoxies and pieties and worldviews that just repeat them over and over and over and insist on acceptance of them, you will eventually start Believing them, even if you didn't start off believing them and were only going along for whatever cynical careerist moves you have, these people really do believe that this time it's going to be all different.
This time they're really going to the camps if Donald Trump wins.
Now, as I said, the Washington Post wasn't the only paper who refused to endorse Kamala despite the expectation that they would do so.
The Los Angeles Times did the same thing.
Here from some of four, two days ago, this was on Wednesday, October 22nd, the Los Angeles Times won't endorse for president.
Quote, the owner of the Los Angeles Times has blocked the paper from endorsing a candidate for president this year.
Last week, the LA Times published its electoral endorsements for the 2024 election.
And while the paper noted in its first line that it, quote, is no exaggeration to say this may be the most consequential election in generation, that was the only mention of the presidential race and its endorsements.
The paper's editorial board, which has endorsed Democratic candidates in every presidential race, Since it first endorsed then, Senator Barack Obama in 2008, was preparing to do so once again this election.
But according to two people familiar with the situation, executive editor Terry Tang told editorial board staff earlier this month that the paper would not be endorsing a candidate in the presidential act in this cycle, a decision that came from the paper's owner, Dr.
Patrick Soon-Shuong, a doctor who made his fortune in the healthcare industry.
The paper did not explain its decision, though it noted at the bottom of its online endorsement page that, quote, the editorial board endorses selectively, choosing the most consequential races in which to make recommendations.
Now, this decision by the LA Times owner, Not to endorse was depicted similarly to the way Jeff Bezos' decision not to endorse was as some kind of frightened fear of tyranny on the horizon of some sort of advanced anticipatory attempt to assuage the new dictator Donald Trump should he win.
Even though the owner of the LA Times is a multi-billionaire worth $7 billion, was a big donor of Hillary Clinton in 2016, although he also, once Trump won in 2017, talked to the Trump administration about a potential cabinet position.
But as you're about to see, despite the fact that it was entirely omitted from any of the narrative that the media created about what this non-endorsement meant by the LA Times, the real reason why they chose not to endorse was something that was nowhere mentioned because it conflicted with the narrative the media wanted to create.
Here from the New York Times on October 23rd, quote, LA Times editorial chief quits after the owner blocks a Harris endorsement.
Mariel Garza said the editorial board was prepared to endorse Kamala Harris, but the paper's owner, Patrick Soon-Shong, decided not to make an endorsement in the presidential race.
Quote, In an interview with Columbia Journalism Review, Mariel Garza, who held the title's editorial editor, said she had quit because, quote, In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up.
This is how I'm standing up.
Ms.
Garza said that the editorial board had planned to endorse Ms.
Harris, but that Dr.
Patrick Soon-Shong, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, decided this month that the newspaper would not make any endorsement for president.
The paper did not explain to readers why it was not issuing an endorsement.
Now, as it turns out, The owner has a daughter, an adult daughter, she's 32 years old, who is very open about her politics.
She tends to be very left-wing.
She's particularly pro-Palestinian and vehemently opposed to the Israeli war in Gaza and the policy of the Biden and Harris administration of funding that war, of supporting it, of arming it, of diplomatically protecting it.
And she has played an increasingly important role and an influential role in all of her father's businesses, including the management of the LA Times.
And so although it got depicted as this, quote, cowardly move by this billionaire afraid of being put in a camp when Trump wins, actually, the reason why the newspaper...
Decided to abstain and not endorse Kamala Harris was not for any of those reasons, but instead was a much more substantive reason as explained by the owner's daughter.
Here from the Hollywood Reporter, this was from today, the daughter of the Los Angeles Times owner says that the paper is refusing to, quote, endorse a candidate that is overseeing a war on children.
Patrick Soon-Shong's outspoken daughter, Nika, posted on Acts on Friday that, quote, genocide is a line in the sand.
In a thread of social media post on Thursday, Nika Soon-Shang attributed the decision to an opposition to Democratic candidate Kamala Harris' position on the war on Gaza.
She wrote that her father, a South African transplant surgeon, had worked as an emergency surgeon in a hospital in Soweto during apartheid.
Quote, Maintaining that the decision to endorse was one made by the Los Angeles Times editorial board, Nika added, quote, In other words, she was saying the reason we didn't endorse Kamala Harris is not because we're afraid of Donald Trump.
It's because we are so vehemently imposed to Kamala Harris and Joe Biden's support for apartheid Israel and for what she later called a genocide in Gaza that we cannot in good conscience endorse a candidate who we believe is committing genocide and supporting apartheid.
That is a red line for our family.
None of that got noted in any of these attempts to equate Jeff Bezos and the LA Times family who owns the paper as being frightened by Trump's authoritarianism and cowardly.
If anything, refusing to endorse Kamala Harris based on its support, the administration's support for Israel when you're a newspaper in Los Angeles is quite a courageous thing to do.
With almost no benefits.
It's the opposite of cowardice.
Here from the AP today, quote, two more LA Times editorial board members resign after the paper withholds a Harris endorsement.
So you see this kind of this sort of attempt to suggest that what these papers are doing are Just a byproduct of the fear that people now have about the new Hitler that is about to be elected.
Here is former Obama White House official Ben Rhodes who utterly ignored the explanation by the LA Times about why they refused to endorse Kamala Harris because they find her support for the Israeli wars to be unconscionable and across a line that they cannot support.
He ignored that completely and he pretended that the two papers had the same rationale.
And here's how he attempted to describe it.
Quote, There is no logic that isn't damning as to why the Washington Post and LA Times feel they can endorse in every local, state, and federal election other than a presidential race.
It's not that these endorsements tip the balance in an election.
It's that the self-censorship because you are afraid of retribution from an authoritarian tells you everything you need to know about the priorities of management.
A lot of the Russian oligarchs who owned media properties in the late 1990s helped or enabled Putin's rights of power, thinking it would help them.
Today, Putin controls every media outlet in Russia.
And these people live just in a fantasy land where they create their own narratives that serve their own interests about what is self-serving for them to believe.
I mean, if you create a world in which it's incredibly courageous and An act of conscience and self-sacrifice to speak out against Donald Trump, then it means every time they do that in the world they've created,
they're somehow engaged in an act of great bravery, of putting themselves in harm's way, at risk of going to a camp Because of their conscious-driven, courageous decision to speak out against Donald Trump, this is what, of course, they want to believe about themselves.
These are people who have never sacrificed or risked for a cause in their entire life.
And so, of course, they want to believe that they're on the front line of some important and scary cause, namely stopping Donald Trump, as if there's a whole line of people who have been murdered and dropped from helicopters and Signed to Dungeons for Life for doing what the media does every single day and has been doing for eight straight years which is denouncing Trump in the most hysterical and extremist terms possible.
Just to highlight one particularly obnoxious example, Jennifer Rubin Who used to be a Republican operative.
She used to, in fact, be such a supporter of Mitt Romney during the 2012 election that it made people uncomfortable that she somehow seemed in love with Mitt Romney.
She's now at the Washington Post.
She's become, like most neocons, which is what she is, a devoted hater of Donald Trump, but also a passionate supporter of Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party.
And in response to the news that One of the editors of the LA Times quit the paper in response to its non-endorsement.
She went onto Twitter that day and wrote, quote, brava, this is courage and shame on her boss for not joining her.
So she was saying that the people at the LA Times who quit were being courageous.
The people who refused to quit Deserves shame.
Obviously she didn't know at the time she was shaming people for not quitting that two days later her own paper was about to do exactly the same thing.
And the question of course then became was Jen Rubin going to quit in response to her own paper's decision also not to endorse given that she spent all day on Wednesday Heaping scorn on everybody who was too cowardly to quit the LA Times in response to this non-endorsement.
And not only didn't she quit today, she just disappeared the whole day and then she came back and started talking about other things, didn't even have the courage to mention, let alone denounce, let alone resign in response to her own paper's decision.
Not to endorse.
I mean, at least the LA Times had a principled policy-based reason for refusing to endorse Kamala Harris, that they find her support for Israel so morally objectionable that they can't in good conscience support her, as opposed to Jeff Bezos just sort of declaring neutrality on the part of the Washington Post from here on out.
Just imagine what kind of person you have to be to make this whole melodramatic showing, spectacle of yourself By heaping scorn and shame on other journalists at the LA Times because they're too scared to quit and do what they're supposed to do,
which is resign in response to their paper's non-endorsement, while two days later when your own paper does exactly that same thing but for less noble motives, you don't even have the courage to mention it, to denounce it, let alone to quit as you were demanding that other people do.
But I think what this really shows, I mean, first of all, it definitely shows that They still have not come to grips with how little sway they have over the American public, with how hated they are, how distrusted they are, how much contempt that they're held in by the American public,
that they actually think that somehow the New York Times and the LA Times and the Washington Post and CNN telling people to go vote for Kamala Harris will make the slightest impact on anybody who already isn't doing that.
It also shows that they...
Really do believe, and I've pointed this out many times, that they believe the purpose and function of journalistic outlets is no longer to report or to journalism.
It's to do anything and everything to help the Democratic Party win.
It's why I quit The Intercept.
Precisely because at the time they refused to allow me to do my job of reporting on these documents and you were authentic because they wanted to make sure that The Intercept wasn't perceived as helping Donald Trump win or helping Joe Biden lose.
And that's what you should do when you're in a media outlet that is non-journalistic and doesn't let you do journalism, which is you should quit.
You don't quit because your paper refuses to become a political activist.
You quit when your paper becomes a political activist in response to their failure to do journalism.
But in this case, they really do see the function of these media outlets is to do everything possible to help Donald Trump be defeated, even if it means lying or disinformation or anything else.
But I also think the last point that it underscores all of this illustrates is that, and we talked about this last night, they really have convinced themselves that they're endangered.
That they're going to go to camps if...
Donald Trump wins.
One of Keith Olbermann's tweets today was to Jeff Bezos saying, even you can do whatever you want, but still, when Trump wins, he's going to deport your wife, Lauren Sanchez, who is a U.S.-born American citizen, and then you and I are both going to be sent to the camps anyway.
I mean, they've created these Holocaust fantasies in their head, these Nazi fantasies in their head, and they've really convinced themselves of it, and they've lost their minds completely.
But if you really believe that Adolf Hitler is on the ballot and has a good chance to win, of course you will believe that news outlets should abandon the journalistic role in favor of the far more important goal of preventing Adolf Hitler from winning.
And this is what they've been believing for eight years.
It's why they've been willing to spread disinformation, even if they know that it's False, because the goal is not to spread true information or true informants to help the Democratic Party win.
That has become their explicit mission, the expectation of their function, and all of this, this rage over a mere decision to remain neutral and not to endorse It really illustrates how these people see themselves, the function of corporate media outlets, as well as the imminent 2024 election, about which they're getting increasingly deranged, in full panic mode, and completely irrational.
All right.
We have talked about before this very bizarre aspect of American political life that the United States, almost alone in the democratic world, has a complete inability to count all the votes that are cast on election day and to announce the results at night.
In fact, it doesn't just take 24 hours for them to do it.
It takes many days.
In fact, it takes weeks.
And sometimes even months for various states to count all the votes that are cast.
We had no results at all that were certified or definitive for many days after the 2020 election day.
There's no election day anymore.
There's constant voting for weeks or more than a month leading up to what we used to call Election Day, but there's no decision announced on Election Day unless it's a landslide or a blowout because the United States just has not implemented a system that enables it to count all the votes, even though pretty much every other country in the democratic world Is able to do that.
I remember in the 2020 primary in California, the Democratic primary, they didn't issue a final vote total until two and a half months after the day that voters went to cast their votes.
Two and a half months it took them to count the votes.
And obviously when everyone sees the rest of the world holding elections and counting votes, including countries of similar sizes to the United States, And then issuing the vote totals in a reliable and certified way hours after the polls close and then see that the United States takes days and weeks to do that, of course that's going to create, validly so, distrust in the integrity of the election.
And already...
We are being primed to not expect any vote tallies to be counted, any results to be known anywhere near election night.
Here from Politico earlier this week, quote, he runs Fox News' decision desk.
Here's how he sees election night coming.
In a new interview, Arnon Mishkin opens up about controversial election calls and makes some predictions for what's to come.
Quote, The race seems very, very closed.
It is dependent on a number of states like Pennsylvania that we believe are going to be reporting in a pattern similar to the way they have reported in the past.
So I'd say the over-under is Saturday.
Remember, Election Day is Tuesday.
He's saying he expects the results to be known on Saturday, four days later, five days later, which is when the call was made the last time, which is when Pennsylvania is likely to come in.
Here from CBS News, Pennsylvania election officials are bracing for conspiracy theories and protests.
Unlike many other states, Pennsylvania can only begin processing mail-in ballots on the morning of Election Day.
It took four days to call the election in Pennsylvania in 2020 as those days passed.
Leaving the 2020 election results hanging in the balance, all eyes were on the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia.
Police and protesters were outside while Schmidt and his fellow members on the Board of Elections oversaw the counting of a record 375,000 mail-in ballots, most of them from Democratic voters.
He has urged people to be patient with Pennsylvania.
Here from the outlet Just the News on October 24th, the headline, Republicans warn of long election day lines in Maricopa County and says the results will be delayed.
Quote, election officials in Maricopa County, Arizona, announced that it will likely take 10 to 13 days to tabulate all the ballots cast in the presidential election next month.
Just more than 2 million people in Maricopa County are expected to vote in the presidential election in two weeks, and already over 400,000 people have voted.
Quote, it will take 10 to 13 days after election day to complete the tabulation of all ballots.
Depending on how close races are, the contest may be called much earlier than that.
An official told Just the News on Wednesday, or if they're too close, we may not know the results for a week or two after what we call election day.
Here from CBS News, quote, Verlini said he doesn't understand the decision to wait until election night to count absentee
votes because it could potentially delay the results.
Now, one of the comparisons that I often make when really looking at this and being confounded, I mean, it has to be deliberate.
I mean, obviously, if every other country can count all their votes on election night, The United States can if it chose to, it just doesn't choose to.
And the country I know best after the United States or one of the countries I know best is Brazil because of how closely I follow their politics and this is what happens in Brazil.
Brazil is, to put it mildly, not known for being particularly bureaucratically efficient.
It's the anti-Germany, as I often think about it.
It's a country that has a great deal of difficulty, and I find it a charm for anything to work efficiently.
And yet, the way elections work is that they take place on a Sunday, not Tuesday, to ensure that the maximum number of people can vote, that work doesn't interfere.
Voting is mandatory, so it's a very pervasive culture that people do go and vote.
They show ID in order to vote, even though Brazil has well-known and notorious income inequality.
And it's not just people who are 18 and over, but even 16 to 18 who can vote.
And Brazil is a little bit smaller than the United States in population.
But when you put all those things together of mandatory voting and a bigger voting block and having it be on Sunday, the number of votes ends up being roughly similar to how many votes have to be counted In the United States, and the way every single election works is that the polls open at 8 o'clock in the morning, they close at 5 p.m.
in the afternoon or 6 p.m.
in the afternoon, depending on particular states, and then by 9 o'clock or 10 o'clock at night, 10, 30 or 11 at the absolute latest, the full complete vote count Not just for the presidential race, but for the governor races, for the state legislatures, are all fully counted and certified.
Here from the New York Times, October 30th, 2022, quote, Brazil elects Lula, a leftist former leader, in a rebuke of Bolsonaro.
Quote, voters in Brazil on Saturday ousted Bolsonaro after just one term and elected the leftist former president Lula da Silva.
Election officials said it rebuked him from Bolsonaro's far-right movement and his divisive four years in office.
As of 11 p.m.
local time on Sunday night, which was election day, Mr.
Bolsonaro had not publicly commented on the election's outcome.
The question of whether he would concede and when remained unclear.
But all the votes were counted.
The full tally was issued.
And although the New York Times depicted it as this rebuke to this far-right movement, in fact, the election was extremely close, extremely narrow, despite all the same Barriers and problems that other incumbents in the world had, like COVID and the resulting electoral economic fallout.
Hear from the New York Times July of this year, quote, how the French election results unfolded.
A left-wing coalition unexpectedly surged, and the far-right national rally fell short of predictions, but no coalition captured a majority in parliament, meaning months of gridlock could lie ahead.
Polls will close at 6 p.m. local time in most of France, although voting will stay open until 8 p.m. in some larger cities.
France's interior minister is expected to start publishing initial results at 8 p.m., and nationwide seat projections by polling institutes are expected at around the same time.
And then the New York Times updated the article throughout the night, and basically within a few hours of the polls closing, they were able to have the full...
Results known.
Here from the U.S. Newsroom will report in February of this year how Indonesia holds the world's biggest single-day election.
Quote, there are roughly 205 million registered voters, and turnout in past elections has been about 75%, according to the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, a U.S.-based organization that provides technical support for elections.
Voters have a six-hour window to cast their ballots.
Indonesia has three time zones and the first polls in the east open at 2200 GMT and all will be closed by 0600 GMT on February 14th.
Voting boosts will be overseen by election officials, party members, and independent observers to safeguard against manipulation.
Polls must be closed nationwide before counting can begin.
Voters cast a secret ballot and dip fingers in indelible ink to prevent duplicate voting.
When an official vote count by the poll body is expected to last late into election night, quick counts by independent survey agencies should provide an early indication of results from 0800 GMT.
within 24 hours.
CNN, April 2024, quote, South Korea opposition wins landslide midterm vote in a resounding blow to President Yoon.
South Korea's liberal opposition party scored a landslide victory in a parliamentary election held on Wednesday, detailing a resounding blow to the president and his conservative party, but likely falling short of a supermajority.
The Democratic Party was projected to take more than 170 of the 300 seats in the new legislature.
Data by the National Election Commission and network broadcasters showed with more than 99% of the votes counted as of 5.55 a.m.
on Thursday.
I could just go on.
Every country counts.
All of their votes in the same night.
Now, there are differences in the U.S., namely that there's no federalized system the way, say, there is in Brazil or France or Argentina or South Korea.
Instead, each state is responsible for certifying and counting and certifying its own vote totals.
Most of these countries now use electronic voting, often with audited paper backups.
Whereas the United States continues to use very antiquated systems that prevent voting instantaneously or through computer, but this is all a choice.
And obviously you should, you can and should ask why the United States makes that choice to ensure that voting doesn't occur instantaneously or vote totals don't occur instantaneously but over days and even weeks.
But is it any wonder, even if the counting is perfectly in good faith, That people have serious doubts about the integrity of the results when days go by and the results keep changing and no one knows where ballots are and there's ballots over here of one kind and ballots over here from another and some are destroyed and some get lost and some get disputed.
This doesn't happen in other democratic countries.
And if the United States wants to restore faith in the electoral system, it's very easy to do.
You implement a nationwide computerized system of voting With audible backups to ensure that they can have audits and then you have a quick instantaneous within four, five, six, seven hours of the poll closing when the results are known.
Not the results being known four days later or two weeks later or a month later or even beyond.
And the indignation that people have in media and in politics when citizens express distrust of the electoral system is stunning.
Given that everything they do is designed to engender that distrust, that valid distrust, especially when you look around at the rest of the world and see so many countries that should have greater difficulties, but instead are perfectly able to count every single vote within hours of the polls closing it.
Until the United States chooses to fix this problem, there will be growing distrust in the electoral process.
All right, Niall, I think we just need that there.
Okay, Niall Harbison is a person whose work I have gotten to know over the past six months or nine months.
It's an incredibly inspiring story.
It's a complex story, but the work that he is doing is devoted to the noble and, I think, inspiring work of rescuing as many street dogs as he can in the place that he now lives, which is Thailand.
He was born...
In Ireland, he has had a series of difficulties in his life that he has very openly talked about and not only talked about the way in which that led him to do this sort of work of rescuing street dogs, but also the ways in which that work that he found has helped him overcome a lot of those problems.
It's a story, a type of story I hear a lot about, being somebody who works myself in the world of dog rescue, and I have been very excited to talk to him for a Genuinely amazing, as is his story, and I want to welcome Niall to our show.
It's great to see you.
Thank you so much for taking the time to come on and talk to us.
Thanks for having me, and it sounds good that you're doing some dog work yourself.
Yeah, yeah.
We have 26 dogs, rescue dogs in our home and a shelter as well that relies on homeless employees.
But I want to talk about your story.
And obviously, you know, part of my interest is based on the work that I've been doing, the impact it had on me, the things that led us to do this work.
But your story, I think, is so interesting.
So let's just begin by talking about the project that you created that began as kind of a small project, now seems to be growing quite rapidly.
It has a lot of different impact and a lot of different areas when it comes to dogs.
Before we get into how you got there and what it's done for you, let's just talk about the project itself and what it is that it's designed to do.
Yeah, so I came to Thailand and I actually started feeding street dogs.
I mean, if anybody's been in this part of the world, in Southeast Asia, there's 8 million street dogs in Thailand, which is unfathomable for anybody in the West or America maybe.
And they're on every street corner, they're outside every shop, they're They really suffer.
So I started feeding them, naively thinking that that would be the solution, but it's evolved from there into a huge program where we actually sterilize dogs.
Sterilizing is like neutering or spaying.
So we're trying to control the population and we also rehome dogs, but our main focus is really on trying to have generational change in how street dogs are treated around the world.
I mean, obviously people can relate to and immediately understand the act of finding a dog on the street who has been abandoned or homeless or stray.
They might be suffering from disease or malnutrition and you pick them up and you care for them and you nurse them back to health and you try and find a home for them.
But what other kinds of more systemic changes are you talking about that you're hoping to be able to implement to make this?
Because as you say, there's so many dogs in the world that even if you devote yourself every day to what I just described, you're helping a tiny fraction and you're not really redressing the problem.
So what kinds of changes does your project look to implement?
Well, without talking badly about anybody else, every organization in the world has failed at doing this so far.
What we're doing at the moment with Dog Rescue is really like a sticky plaster on a heart attack.
Nobody's directly addressing the core problem, which is overpopulation.
So our main focus is really three areas.
One is sterilizing, which is Kind of quite boring and people don't get that excited about it.
It's controlling dog populations and stuff like that.
People prefer the cute makeover or the really nice rescue story, which we do as well.
And the second part then is education.
So we need to change hearts and minds and And really, there's a lot of dog lovers in this part of the world, but they maybe don't have the tools or the knowledge.
And then the third part, which I haven't got to yet, which is very important, is kind of, I just call it legislation at the moment, but we need to get governments involved and we need to really have state...
Participation to fix this problem because there's 500 million street dogs in the world.
And my ambition is to half that in my lifetime.
So I've got to try and save 250 million dogs, which is challenging, but I think we're on the right path, hopefully.
One of the things I've seen your project entail, and every dog rescue project that I think has real value that goes beyond just the obvious steps of trying to just randomly save a few dogs here and there, which is a great thing to do, certainly better than nothing, is the idea of Public education and sterilization because dogs breed very rapidly and very easily and very quickly at a very young age.
And it's sort of like running behind this wheel that just keeps going faster and faster the more you run behind it.
If you don't sterilize street dogs, they're just going to keep producing by the thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions.
So what is it that you're doing in that regard?
Yeah, so a really good analogy is if you think of a bathtub overflowing, the way they think of it is rescue dogs is just sort of mopping up the floor.
But what we're trying to do is turn off the tap so the bath stops overflowing.
And you're right about rescues.
A lot of my friends have rescues and people that I respect and love, but they're really drowning in a problem that can never be fixed.
And it's so sad that, especially with street dogs, it's not a great life to just take them off the street and put them into a rescue where it can often feel like a prison for them.
So we really want to systematically change the whole Outlay for street dogs.
And we do other things, like we feed 1,000 street dogs every day.
We make them really nutritious food with rice and vegetables.
So there's 1,000 dogs every day get a great meal.
We also provide them with vet care.
But really the most important is we're up to 6,000 operations now every month, 6,000 sterilizations, which is a tiny, tiny drop in the ocean.
But I only started on my own two years ago.
So I feel like we're making some progress, but we kind of think of it as a sort of a growth startup type way.
That's my background.
I used to work in marketing.
So I'm trying to think of a way to sort of scale it really, really fast because the dogs are out there suffering really horrible, you know, car crashes, poisonings, really bad diseases on a daily basis.
And I see that and I just want to fix it as quickly as I can.
So one of the reasons I enjoy so much talking to people who do this And it's not only because people feel good about hearing people devoted to dogs in need, although that I think is a very positive aspect, is that it's very rare that people get devoted to this because they say were born in a family whose parents were devoted to it and they just kind of picked it up.
It's something that, you know, I think has to...
Be created by something in your life that leads you to this work.
Sometimes it can just be coincidence, but oftentimes I think it's sort of deeper than that.
But can you talk about how it is that you ended up as someone born in Ireland, as sort of a resident and citizen of Ireland who ended up in Thailand, but not just ended up in Thailand, but specifically devoting your life to dogs and to the effort to protect and save them?
Yeah, I think you're right.
Some of the stuff that we see on a daily basis in animal rescue is just horrific.
I mean, it's the worst of the worst.
I don't share it online because I don't think people want to see that.
But you need a special sort of, I don't know, willpower to do it.
And yet my background was, I was an alcoholic and I nearly drank myself to death.
I ended up in ICU. I was addicted to red wine, Valium, Everything.
I was an alcoholic for 25 years and I moved to Thailand, ironically, to try and get healthy because there's quite a drinking culture in Ireland.
The weather's dark, it's cold.
So I said, go somewhere where the weather is nice and try and get sober.
But the opposite happened.
Family or friends around here.
So I went off the rails big time.
So I ended up in hospital.
I've suffered for depression and had some childhood trauma for my whole life.
And then I just, when I was in hospital, hooked up to all the machines.
I mean, I was nearly dead.
They were pumping, I don't know what, into me to keep me alive.
I just said, wow, I need to make a change.
If I do this again, I'm going to die.
So I walked out of the hospital, never drank again, never took anything again.
And that was four years ago.
And once you've come that close to death and seen the sort of The end.
Everything goes out of life.
I don't care about money.
I don't care about material goods or anything.
I just want to make a difference for the dogs in their lives.
And it is an incredibly challenging world.
Really, you see the worst of humanity.
You see cruelty.
You see neglect.
You see everything.
So I think...
My background of, you know, I saw my mom getting beaten up when I was smaller.
So seeing that and seeing, you know, nearly dying in hospital, I think, makes me able to deal with the dogs because I can go out there and say, right, I've seen some pretty bad stuff, but let's get you guys fixed and let's make a difference in the world.
Yeah.
There is, as I'm sure you know, this kind of rapidly increasing rate of alcoholism and addiction in the modern Western world.
We talk a lot about on this show and elsewhere some of the attributes of how life in the West kind of isolates people, atomizes people, keeps us behind computer screens.
We're very much removed from the way that we've evolved as human beings over many centuries.
And as a result, oftentimes we end up with kind of a lack of connection.
And I think there's a lot of understanding and knowledge now about addiction and alcoholism of the kind that you suffered, this very severe kind that almost killed you, that a lot of it just comes from this...
It's not so much...
Oh, these substances are addictive and if you take them then you're hooked.
It really comes from this kind of spiritual deprivation or spiritual illness, kind of a lack of purpose, a lack of connection.
And I know so many people who say that their work with dogs is what finally kind of cured them of That underlying malady doesn't cure you of everything.
It doesn't make your traumas disappear, but it's something that gives a kind of connectiveness that often can be evasive or difficult when dealing with humans or the rest of the world.
How has that been for you?
Because so often I know when people hear about someone who rescues dogs, they think, oh, that person is doing so much for those dogs.
It's so nice and benevolent.
But in fact, the dogs are doing so much for you as well.
Can you talk a little bit about what your own experience has been in that regard?
Yeah, that's a really good point.
I think that the dogs have saved me as much as I've saved them.
I've obviously got an addictive personality, so I don't think it's wrong to say that I'm addicted to the feeling of joy that I get in saving a dog.
As an alcoholic, I was probably not very reliable, you know, would not show up on time and stuff like that or show up at all.
So being able to show up every day and bring the dogs a simple meal and see their tails wagging and see them like they depend on you.
So it's a lovely feeling to have that.
And you do have that connection with the dogs.
Like I feed over a hundred every day.
Personally, we feed a thousand around the island with volunteers.
And those hundred dogs are, you know, looking into your eyes and Excited to see you.
And there is a real connection.
And you're completely right, because when I then finish the dogs about 10 or 11, I've walked into a coffee place to have a coffee and I look around.
Everybody's staring at their phone.
The latest news is on.
It's depressing.
It's, you know, People, ironically, come to Thailand to escape the rat race and to escape the nine to five and all the pressures of life.
But then the first thing they're doing here is I look at them.
They're staring at their phones instead of looking at the beautiful view.
And I'm as guilty as anybody of looking at my phone.
It's a very addictive monster that we have in our pocket at all times.
But the connection with the dogs is beautiful.
And yeah, it would be nice to go back to that way of life full time for a lot of people.
But yeah, dogs are fantastic.
I think there's sort of sometimes...
First of all, people love dog rescue stories as content online.
There are a few things that viralize as much that make people as happy.
You know, from the beginning, the internet was sort of driven by...
Consumption of porn and animal stories, you know, of all kinds.
And for all the talk about how, you know, oh, animals are meant to be eaten and all of this, people clearly have a sort of inbuilt empathy for animals that moves them emotionally when they see them online, not just dogs, but certainly especially dogs as well.
As you say, it can It's not always a happy ending.
It's not always easy because you're dealing with a lot of sad cases, a lot of difficult cases, cases that don't have a happy ending.
But what about people who are sort of cynical and say, yeah, it seems kind of nice that you're helping these dogs, but there's at least as much, if not more, human suffering.
And as humans, our obligation ought to be to prioritize the alleviation of human suffering and not the suffering of animals.
How do you think about that?
Well, I think humans are doing each other enough damage that they can figure it out themselves is my kind of logic of the thing.
The thing with the dogs is I share content that's really positive and uplifting.
I kind of edit it for one of a better reasons to put it into the world.
When I started this, I was like, okay, I know how to make content.
I can go down the traditional route, which every rescue and dog charity around the world does.
They need to show the suffering.
But if you're on the subway in New York or you're driving in London, you don't want to I don't want to scroll and see some dog with half its head missing and blood and guts.
You want to see something positive.
So I try and put positive stories out there where you show the change that's been made, you show a recovery of an animal, and it puts...
We offer a solution as well.
It's not just saying, send us money immediately, we're going to close down.
That's unfortunately the world that a lot of dog rescues live in, whereas I'm trying to create something where there's a real tangible solution.
And the work that we do by sterilizing all those dogs, we'll sterilize 50,000 dogs this year, which will stop half a million dogs coming into the world.
That's a little bit abstract when you hear those numbers, but like half a million dogs won't be born into suffering because of what we do this year.
So I think it's really important to focus on the positives and in terms of should we be coming up with something like, I mean, I look at the oceans around here beside me or the sea and it's, you know, troll full of plastic and horrible.
That's a huge problem on its own, and I'm not the one to fix that.
I'm going to focus on the dogs, which is hard enough as it is to tackle, and hopefully somebody else will focus on the other problems.
Yeah, I mean, the idea of trying to prioritize suffering or needs, if you did focus on humans and giving people education, you would say, oh, why are you focusing on humans in the United States?
There's children who are in Sudan or in Somalia who are suffering even worse, and I think Anybody who's trying to lessen suffering in the world is inherently doing a noble thing and the attempt to say, oh no, objectively there's something you should be doing differently, is a byproduct of cynicism.
One of the reasons I found your work online is because it really is compelling.
You tell a story in a way that I think only someone truly devoted to this work And you tell it in a way that individualizes the story and personality of each dog and their recovery.
And that's something that's not easy to do.
So for those people who are interested in your work, who want to support it, but especially who want to follow it and understand it, where can people find you?
I'd say the two best places are on X or whatever we're calling it these days, just my name and Instagram.
My name as well is, or the charity is happydoggo.com.
But yeah, I'm not hard to find and it's just positive, uplifting dog content without any pressure on, you know, I think you can just follow along and feel inspired in a dark world that we sometimes live in.
Yeah, I mean, we call this doom scrolling where you just kind of constantly use your phone and you find all this bad news.
And to see something that's kind of uplifting, but not in an artificial or syrupy way, but in a very genuine and kind of devoted way, I think, is cleansing for the human soul.
It certainly has that effect on me when I look at your content.
So I want to say thank you for that.
I really appreciate it.
And I hope people will follow your work and then just see the impact that it has on them.
And I hope you keep the great work.
Thanks very much for having me.
All right, have a good evening.
All right, so that concludes our show for this evening.
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