True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 157: Havana Nights
Aired: 2021-05-13
Duration: 01:28:29


=== Tricked Noah Onto Slowburn (03:14) ===

[00:00:00]  Welcome to the intro.
[00:00:03]  In one of our recent raids on the Cuban shore, me and 16 of my buddies captured a 5'2, giant nosed, just huge nose.
[00:00:18]  He's got pauses.
[00:00:19]  He's got a big, he's got a fucking, this man's Yamaka is like a goddamn frisbee.
[00:00:25]  Like not, it's huge.
[00:00:29]  And look at his ID.
[00:00:31]  I mean, I can't read.
[00:00:32]  I had him, you know, I had a couple of ladies do it for me.
[00:00:34]  It says his name is Noah Colwyn.
[00:00:38]  His podcast, of course, is I can't remember the name.
[00:00:43]  Yeah, it doesn't matter, but it's a competitor of ours.
[00:00:47]  So we have tricked Noah onto, he's not on, he's not on a lot.
[00:00:50]  It's called Slowburn.
[00:00:51]  Yeah.
[00:00:52]  It's called Slowburn.
[00:00:53]  It's a slate podcast.
[00:00:57]  But we have tricked Noah Coolwyn, or as I like to call him, Noah Fool Lose, into coming onto our fucking podcast so we can trick him into saying two things.
[00:01:08]  One, Ahmed Chalabi, fucking fun name to say, also probably should have been president.
[00:01:14]  And two, that, oh, really lost steam with that one.
[00:01:19]  that you're gay all right we're gonna do this really quickly because i feel like there's like five segments to this show
[00:01:48]  My name is Brace.
[00:01:50]  Hi, Brace.
[00:01:51]  I'm Liz.
[00:01:52]  We are joined by producer Yam Chomsky, as always.
[00:01:57]  Welcome.
[00:01:58]  Hello, everyone.
[00:01:58]  This is Truanan.
[00:02:00]  We are back.
[00:02:01]  This is not an episode about JFK, although it is slightly JFK related.
[00:02:06]  But that we are going to get to a little bit later in the show.
[00:02:10]  The main, the main meat of the hour, if you will.
[00:02:14]  Okay.
[00:02:14]  Don't like you saying that, but okay, proceed.
[00:02:17]  But first, I want to introduce our guest today, Noah.
[00:02:19]  Hello, Noah Colwyn.
[00:02:21]  Everyone knows him.
[00:02:23]  We introduced Noah like five times.
[00:02:26]  No, it's really funny.
[00:02:28]  We did.
[00:02:28]  We introduced him in the intro.
[00:02:30]  We introduced him in this second intro that we're doing.
[00:02:34]  Yeah, the second segment, but we didn't in the first segment.
[00:02:38]  Yeah, he's been on this podcast like 50 times.
[00:02:40]  We'd be like, oh, we got the Jewish guy.
[00:02:42]  Yeah, who's O?
[00:02:43]  Oh, I'm sorry.
[00:02:44]  I hear it.
[00:02:45]  Who's that?
[00:02:46]  Look, okay, we have Noah on.
[00:02:49]  First of all, we have him on because he's got this new season of Blowback, this podcast.
[00:02:53]  It's not called Slowburn.
[00:02:55]  It's called Blowback.
[00:02:57]  Maybe you've heard of it.
[00:02:58]  You probably have listened to the first season, but the second season is out now on Stitcher Premium.
[00:03:04]  Look how I'm learning how to say these things and promote stuff.
[00:03:09]  And we're talking about Cuban exile groups and kind of their political role.

=== Sheikh Sharak Incident (15:21) ===

[00:03:14]  But we got to talk about some other stuff in the news first, right?
[00:03:17]  So let's get into that.
[00:03:19]  Yes.
[00:03:20]  Iron Dome, engage.
[00:03:43]  We are welcoming back to the show one of our all-timer guests, Noah Colwin from Blowback Pot.
[00:03:49]  And we had actually originally brought Noah on to talk about Cuban exile community and all that that means.
[00:03:56]  But we are a little bit preempted by the news.
[00:03:58]  We're still going to talk about that.
[00:04:00]  But there is some pretty heavy stuff going on in Israel.
[00:04:02]  And Noah's going to give us a little talk on that, aren't you?
[00:04:06]  Right.
[00:04:06]  So the story that's sort of coming out of Israel and Palestine is that over the past couple of weeks, the world has sort of attention has been drawn to Sheikh Sharak, which is a neighborhood in East Jerusalem.
[00:04:18]  And it's a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem.
[00:04:21]  Now, it has been a long-standing policy of the Israeli government to try and winnow down the population of East Jerusalem Palestinians, Arabs, non-Jews who do not live in places that they want to be contiguous Jewish populations.
[00:04:36]  And what is really, really critical about this, these evictions is that, you know, this is something that has been going on for years.
[00:04:43]  This is not a new thing.
[00:04:45]  This is something that like there was an earlier iteration of, you know, anti-occupation activism that was actually called the Sheikh Sharak Solidarity Movement with Israelis and people abroad.
[00:04:57]  But obviously, Palestinians have been fighting this out for years.
[00:05:01]  And, you know, there are, it's not just in this neighborhood, but in the neighborhood of Silan, for example, which is very close to the Temple Mount, which I can talk a little bit more about in a minute.
[00:05:10]  In the neighborhood of Silan, you have a group called Elad that is like a giant nonprofit that's given special dispensation by the state that with the support of the Jewish National Fund, you know, the little tin box where people would put their tzadakah, the Jewish National Fund, the Jewish National Fund is on the warrant for eviction of Palestinian families in East Jerusalem, in East Jerusalem.
[00:05:35]  And so there is a systematic process by which Palestinians are being removed.
[00:05:41]  And this time of year, I'll could say it's, you know, with the beginning of Ramadan, it's a holy time for Muslims, Jerusalem and Dome of the Rock.
[00:05:50]  And Al-Quds, you know, it's the third holiest site in Islam after Mecca and Medina.
[00:05:56]  And I think that there, you know, it's, it's, it's, we are seeing as of Monday night when we're recording this episode is we're seeing parts of the Temple Mount and Al-Quds go up in flames.
[00:06:08]  We've seen Israeli soldiers, you know, beat and attack and tear gas people praying, cording off access, and Israeli crowds chanting Kahanas slogans of, you know, the slogans and songs of a guy so odious and represented a party that was considered too racist to be legal in Israel.
[00:06:30]  So that's like the level on which like they're operating.
[00:06:33]  Meanwhile, you know, there are now some rockets coming out of Hamas, coming out of Gaza as well.
[00:06:38]  And Hamas and, you know, like this sort of Hamas quote unquote provocation that the Israelis are now using as an excuse to send enormous, you know, aggressive, forceful like responses, just totally disproportionate.
[00:06:54]  And already they're reporting casualties.
[00:06:56]  Yeah, something like nine children have died in Gaza.
[00:06:58]  I mean, whatever number that we're going to come up with talking about now, it will have gone up by the time this comes out.
[00:07:03]  Absolutely.
[00:07:03]  And like the images of blood just spilled all over the steps of Al-Aqsa, too.
[00:07:08]  It's just like, I mean, it's, it's, I think what seems a little different about this is that like it is for some reason people are paying more attention to this.
[00:07:17]  I mean, these sort of atrocities happen every day in Israel or Palestine, rather.
[00:07:22]  Yes and no, because this is where you said earlier, like it seems like it's ratcheted up.
[00:07:26]  I mean, the fire at Al-Aqsa and the riots there, you know, historically, the Israeli government, I think, and the Israeli military, you know, they really do view the occupation and the control over Palestinian lives as some sort of like balance that has to be maintained.
[00:07:43]  And that has to also be reconciled with the fact that they have this annihilationist expansionist ideology that, you know, requires the constant acquisition of ancestral land that other people happen to be living on and did live on in the past and so on.
[00:07:56]  Yeah.
[00:07:56]  I mean, that video that came out sometime last week of the guy, the porcine sort of man with the New York accent arguing with a woman about how he took her house and it was legal.
[00:08:06]  And, you know, if I don't do it, someone else will have done it.
[00:08:09]  I mean, I think that was really like you don't often see these videos, especially not in English, of somebody just like blatantly telling it like it is there.
[00:08:18]  And I think that's something that's something that people to keep in mind is that like most of this is legal.
[00:08:23]  Like it's done under the jurisdiction of the Israeli legal system.
[00:08:27]  And these evictions, you know, Zionist defenders will point out that like, oh, well, sometimes they rule in favor of Palestinians, but it'll happen maybe one time out of 20.
[00:08:37]  Well, it's really not even like when those people say things like that, they're not being honest for a couple of reasons.
[00:08:44]  The first of which is that like East Jerusalem, where this is happening, is itself a specific and complicated situation because East Jerusalemites are not considered citizens of Israel.
[00:08:54]  And much of like they are not politically enfranchised in the same way that like Arab citizens of Israel are, but neither do they suffer under, like they don't live under the same kind of rules of occupation that apply to Palestinians in the West Bank or who live under the blockade in Gaza.
[00:09:10]  And so, I mean, so the way those people are being dishonest because Palestinians, like there's all these fractured ways that Palestinians are made to live.
[00:09:19]  And in the eviction court, like the Palestinians do not have legal standing and they are not given or credited any of like the same rights, which is why these evictions are happening.
[00:09:27]  And more to the point, more broadly, it's reflective of it's similar to the same dynamic, although not quite the same thing as how settlers acquire Palestinians' lands elsewhere or how Palestinians are not tried under the same laws.
[00:09:41]  Basically, settlers in the West Bank, no matter where they are in Israel, as long as Israel considers it part of Greater Israel or Israel proper, settlers carry around with them the sphere of Israeli law.
[00:09:53]  So if I'm a settler and I live in, I live in a settlement in the Gushetsion block, and I'm in one of the more fringy ones on the outside of it, and there's a Palestinian village nearby, and there are these kids who are with their goats or whatever, and I want to go fuck with them.
[00:10:08]  If I go fuck with them and a military jeep comes up from the IDF, the obligation of the IDF soldier there is to protect the settler, no matter what happens.
[00:10:17]  So if the settler starts wailing on these kids, starts trying to kill their animal, abuse them, harass them, or whatever, the IDF soldier's obligation is not to do anything other than protect the settler, no matter what turn it takes.
[00:10:28]  And secondly, the settler, let's say something were to happen, anything the settler does gets treated as if he's a citizen of Israel and it gets handled in an Israeli court.
[00:10:36]  The Palestinians live under martial military law.
[00:10:39]  And under military law, they have all of these restrictions that effectively make them non-citizens.
[00:10:43]  They do not enjoy full political emancipation.
[00:10:46]  They constantly, they live under, if you're in the West Bank, under Israeli military rule.
[00:10:51]  So it's like, sure, maybe one Palestinian in a blue moon catches a break in the system somehow.
[00:10:57]  But on the whole, what the system is, allows for indefinite and arbitrary detention, no habeas corpus.
[00:11:02]  And, you know, I would say, like, as we're seeing now, also, you know, as it relates to habeas corpus, the right for the Israeli government to come and take your home.
[00:11:11]  And, you know, I think that there are, I don't want to pretend to know about like why all of this is happening at precisely this moment, but I think it's, you know, with the Ramadan, with the Israeli elections, with a lot of anxieties about the stability of the Israeli ruling coalition, and also now the fact that like they just canceled elections again for the PA, and which means that like, you know, you're talking about like over a decade in which there have not been elections held in the West Bank.
[00:11:36]  It's a very, I mean, you know, it's sort of understandable that like, I think a lot of people have been saying for a long time that something like this might happen, but people can always say that.
[00:11:45]  I think it's just sort of incumbent on people to really pay attention and see just how bad it will get before somebody is eventually able to get the Israeli government to either back off or the Palestinian resistance is able to convince them that they have to.
[00:11:59]  Because truthfully, the Israeli government won't stop until somebody does, somebody makes them.
[00:12:04]  You said something like this would happen, or people have been saying something like this would happen.
[00:12:08]  You mean because the state, the Israeli state needs to shore up domestic support because it's so shaky right now?
[00:12:15]  I think it's at both ends.
[00:12:17]  The first of which is that, like, you know, there's this, I think Palestinians have sort of, and Palestinian critics who I read in English, you can read at 972mag.com.
[00:12:28]  And also, I think the perspective at Electronic and the FADA on this has been pretty, pretty helpful.
[00:12:35]  But basically, like there is from Israeli domestically, like obviously like incredible pressure to, you know, like allow for settlement and do these things because it is, you know, historically how Netanyahu has able to been, you know, consolidated support.
[00:12:51]  And the right does it in general.
[00:12:53]  And then for the Palestinian side, you know, what I said earlier about there not being elections, the PA, and the PLO, you know, which is, you know, sort of a one-party system run by the PLO or Fatah, like, and I'm speaking sort of in generalities there.
[00:13:09]  The, you know, it's, it's Chair Mahmoud Abbas.
[00:13:11]  Like his, he is the leader of the Palestine Authority and the de facto negotiator on behalf of the Palestinians, but he's not really somebody who has an enormous amount of political power if it were ever exposed democratically.
[00:13:22]  Hamas has been making inroads in the West Bank and so on.
[00:13:25]  And so there is a real, like, you know, like a problem in Palestinian politics where it's been very stuck at the level of governance.
[00:13:33]  And, you know, I think that this is people, when they say that people have been expecting something like this, like, you know, it's been fairly easy to imagine a situation in which people suddenly get really, really pissed off because as anybody can read about like the myriad crimes visited upon Palestinians daily.
[00:13:52]  You know, I don't think anything's like inevitable.
[00:13:55]  Like rather, I don't want to speak in those kinds of terms, but this was, I think it's, it should be understood that this was, there is a chain of events that led this, that, that you can see that led to this happening.
[00:14:05]  What do you think comes next?
[00:14:07]  The response has been, I mean, the videos are, you know, are horrific and they've been pretty widely shared on social media.
[00:14:16]  I know that like a couple of American celebrities have started tweeting about it or like Instagramming, Instagram posting about it.
[00:14:26]  That usually signals a kind of a certain kind of like middle class liberal pressure kind of developing, which has happened on and off through the past couple of decades, honestly, in America.
[00:14:42]  I mean, I don't mean to say that that means that some things will change.
[00:14:45]  I just mean that, you know, kind of watching what the American response will be.
[00:14:49]  I'm curious what you think.
[00:14:50]  Well, if there will be any at all.
[00:14:52]  I mean, like on the plus side, like, look, like there has never been a moment like the one we're in in terms of like, like, where, um, like, I think the horizons for Palestinian solidarity can go in America.
[00:15:05]  Um, there are openly BDS supporting members of Congress in the Democratic Party.
[00:15:11]  There are like, and those people have not been, much to the regret and chagrin of the APAC crowd, have not been sufficiently or they have not been marginalized from like any influence from influence and population being able to shape popular opinion on this issue, even if they're not getting, you know, the committee assignments yet to really be involved.
[00:15:31]  Um, so that's that is, I think, like one thing, one thing to consider that like there are people who at the very least, you know, there should be pressure being applied to them to really be the standard bears into this moment and to and to, you know, reiterate, you know, who's in the right, who's in the wrong here and why.
[00:15:47]  I also think that there is, you know, you're, you're totally correct because I've picked up on it too.
[00:15:51]  And I tweeted something to this effect.
[00:15:53]  I really do feel very like there is a sea change in how people talk about this issue and the framing that they talk about it and like the revulsion that they experience and why they experience it.
[00:16:04]  And it's not because this is impossibly complicated.
[00:16:07]  It's not because there are any of these like, you know, banalities that generally get thrown at you by the mainstream media or elected officials.
[00:16:13]  It's just like, you know, it's a combination of, I think, like the fact that it's as Israel has become more nakedly racist and it has made its apartheid-like qualities its most defining qualities in the international eye, including in the U.S., it becomes that much harder for it to do this kind of thing.
[00:16:34]  I think that this is where, you know, the other interesting consideration is the fact that Israel now officially has like a public relationship with Saudi Arabia and the UAE and so on.
[00:16:44]  And, you know, they're, I mean, I'm sure maybe you guys have all seen these, but like the videos coming out of Yemen of people marching in solidarity with Palestinians and Jerusalem.
[00:16:55]  And, you know, Saudi Arabia, if you're like the head of Saudi Arabian intelligence, you know, I'm not going to claim to be somebody who is like an expert.
[00:17:02]  I mean, I am.
[00:17:03]  Yeah.
[00:17:03]  Okay.
[00:17:04]  So perhaps, so you can tell me if I'm wrong here, but like if I'm a Saudi Arabian counterintelligence guy, I'm not exactly looking at this and thinking, gee, Israel is making my life easier as an ally right now.
[00:17:14]  And I think that like, this is where, you know, when we do get to the what's next question, it's part of why like Israel does not, like, there's not any good way for this to explain it to them.
[00:17:24]  And while when Trump was president, they may have been able to get away with some of it.
[00:17:27]  I don't think that they're going to be able, like, they're going to have to explain it.
[00:17:30]  What the consequences are, how it will yield to something better for Palestinians, I don't know.
[00:17:35]  But the consciousness shift is definitely there.
[00:17:37]  And I think that like the basis for like a real kind of pressure on this issue exists now in a way that just like it has never, at least not in my lifetime, not in my adult lifetime, could ever have been said to exist, at least not in the Oslo era for sure.
[00:17:51]  I did see an Israeli journalist say something like, we should annihilate or delete.
[00:17:54]  I'm not really sure how the translation actually works out, you know, neighborhoods in Gaza, basically saying we should wipe out entire neighborhoods that like Hamas controls.
[00:18:05]  You know, and people, you know, people responded sort of, you know, I looked like liberal Israelis were responding like, well, you know, like we shouldn't talk like that.
[00:18:13]  You know, it's just Hamas that's at fault here.
[00:18:15]  And he said something to the effect of like, well, what, what, what's the worst that could happen?
[00:18:20]  And, you know, he's correct, I think, at least in the short term, is that in many ways, Israel can essentially do whatever it wants right now.
[00:18:31]  And nothing, there will be no real pressure on it from any outside group.

=== One-State Solution Courageously Discussed (15:34) ===

[00:18:36]  I mean, there is a sea change, I think, or at least the possibility of a sea change in certain segments of the public's opinion.
[00:18:42]  But on the international level, I mean, Israel is essentially free to do as it wishes at any point.
[00:18:47]  Well, this is, I mean, I think that this is where it's like, it's worth also examining why Israel is allowed to operate within that.
[00:18:57]  And where is the weak leg on the stool propping them up?
[00:19:02]  And I think that, you know, the moment, like, it's very difficult.
[00:19:07]  It will become, I would not underestimate the capacity for like a real grind of bad headlines and things to change the way that this issue gets talked about.
[00:19:19]  Again, I'm not going to say that like it's going to be something that like translates to concrete policy changes.
[00:19:25]  I mean, this thing is so ongoing, I couldn't even, it would be like really like foolish to even try and speculate it that far ahead.
[00:19:31]  But like when you are looking at, you know, just the immediate way that people are talking about this and you know, you know, yeah, the headlines at CNN and the New York Times probably are going to continue to suck shit.
[00:19:42]  But as far as like how many people get mad about them and how many people understand that when they see these bad headlines, that they don't necessarily like jibe with what's going on.
[00:19:51]  Like, I think people, I'm, I'm, I am an optimist on that count.
[00:19:55]  Like, I think that like the, the balance, the tide is truly turning in that sense.
[00:19:59]  Well, I think to like Brace's point, I mean, Israel is proof positive of the like ask for forgiveness, not for permission rule, which is like, I do think that you're correct that they can kind of do whatever until scolded.
[00:20:16]  And that seems to be sort of like just the pattern of, you know, the past, God, I don't know.
[00:20:23]  What do we want to say?
[00:20:24]  10, 15 years, 20 years as it, as Israeli policy continues to encroach and encroach and encroach.
[00:20:32]  But like, I do want to say, I mean, and then, you know, on the flip side to Noah's point, I don't know about New York Times headlines and the kind of institutional press and CNN.
[00:20:43]  I'll say that social media has like an absolutely different, a totally, totally different reaction than what you'll see on New York Times.
[00:20:52]  And by social media, I mean like the whole, the whole fucking shebang.
[00:20:56]  I mean Twitter, I mean Instagram, Instagram, which is like the home of middle-class America, middle-class liberal America, by the way, YouTube and TikTok are like all fucking over this and sharing this.
[00:21:09]  Like it'll be really interesting to see.
[00:21:12]  I mean, if you're interested in kind of how these narratives end up, like media narratives end up pushing politicians and pushing policy, it'll be really interesting to see the kind of split here and what ends up affecting what.
[00:21:25]  Because I do think that what you're saying about the way that people talk about and frame these issues and kind of tiptoe around the Israeli question has certainly changed in just the past, I don't know, six years.
[00:21:40]  Totally.
[00:21:40]  And look, this is like, I mean, we are, as we're recording this episode, like there are new statements coming out from Democratic members of Congress who like have no business putting out statements like this.
[00:21:51]  Which is just because like these images are arresting.
[00:21:54]  They're powerful.
[00:21:55]  And I think that, you know, I mean, look, like my initial reaction is that like Israel, even on like a strategic sense, letting things get to this point in the sense of like, you know, ramping up the evictions,
[00:22:11]  fucking with people around the, around Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock and truly like, you know, allowing like the, for Jerusalem Day, as they call it for their, you know, celebration of the reconquest of the old city in 1967, you know, they're, I mean, like, I guess the way I would put it is that, you know, the, like all of these things, like that was a strategic misfire if you are Israel looking to not like, you know, jeopardize your position.
[00:22:40]  Because truthfully now, it's like, oh, American Democratic officials are like, all right, maybe, you know, like these, these squishes have had some points about like Israel getting out of line.
[00:22:49]  Maybe we do have to like, you know, jerk the chain a bit.
[00:22:52]  Because by the way, like, you know, every so often you will get some psycho-cretan who will come out of the woodwork and, you know, who will stick their head out and say, oh, by the way, Israel policy makes no sense.
[00:23:03]  You know, Robert Gates, for example, and they always do this after they leave office.
[00:23:06]  Like Rob Gates always like, you know, like, you know, a Bush era CIA, like a CIA director, just like, you know, a Secretary of Defense from end of the Bush, end of W. Bush into Obama, you know, like a true, like, like as evil a man as gets to draw breath.
[00:23:22]  And even he, I remember, gave an interview or talked to somebody, I think it was like a Bloomberg opinion piece years ago, you know, talking about how it's like, oh, yeah, our Israel strategy is terrible.
[00:23:32]  There's a documentary, you know, like about like all these Israeli generals saying, oh, it's disastrous.
[00:23:36]  Oh, it's bad.
[00:23:36]  Like all these people know that from a strategic point of view in the long run, like things like what are happening today do not like like they only make Israel like they drive it like they make it play out the arc of the apartheid story in all its pain in all its pain and glory, you know, like much more vividly.
[00:23:55]  And I think that, you know, like on the one hand, like. there's obviously an optimistic interpretation, forward-reading interpretation of that that like feels a little bit like that's where it gets speculative in a way that I'm not comfortable with.
[00:24:07]  But what feels totally like, you know, critical to me is that it's like, okay, like, well, what is the thing from the outside?
[00:24:12]  It's just like enormous international pressure and solidarity that has to be brought to fore.
[00:24:16]  Just like not shutting the fuck up about this, making it like as, you know, night and day a litmus test for, you know, because like ironically, you know, there's the whole PEP thing in the UK or whatever, progressive except for Palestine.
[00:24:27]  Like there's got to be like an, you know, an inverse.
[00:24:30]  Like there's got to be like an enforcement excessively of this thing because Americans have been so, because the American left has been so slacking on it.
[00:24:37]  And by the American left, I'm very generously including a lot of people who probably shouldn't be.
[00:24:41]  But I think to your point, like about how all the policy and the violence, the settlements really take the narrative and the reality of apartheid sort of to its, it's, it's on its, on its course, further on its course.
[00:24:53]  I mean, to me, it's inexorable.
[00:24:55]  There is no turning back from the way that Israel is.
[00:24:58]  I mean, it has been so many decades.
[00:25:01]  You know, there has been a line of, you know, and I think that there, you know, most of the people who think this way, I don't respect and disagree with, but there are a few who I do respect and disagree with.
[00:25:11]  And like, you know, who are like, you know, liberal Zionists in the true sense, who believe that like there can be a Jewish state for the Jews and a Palestinian state for the Palestinians, and that it can broadly be constructed along like the 1967 borders and so on and so on.
[00:25:25]  And like that has been like in theory, it was never really a particularly great prospect for the basis of diplomatic negotiation.
[00:25:34]  And in practice, it became a cover for the Israeli government to ramp up the settler enterprise.
[00:25:42]  So it's like, we have to not look at the, you know, sort of like failure of the two-state solution and these sort of, you know, false dreams of making Israel work.
[00:25:50]  We have to look at, well, what has actually happened?
[00:25:53]  And it's that the Israeli political system very successfully absorbed these efforts at, you know, negotiation and so on.
[00:26:00]  It took something like land for peace in the 1990s, which the right wing viewed as anathema as a death sentence.
[00:26:06]  And instead, it made it, you know, even stronger.
[00:26:08]  If anything, it made the Israeli system much more resilient because then they were able to use the negotiation as a fig leaf.
[00:26:13]  And because the Palestinians never actually got any meaningful concessions from Oslo, they just got this quasi-governmental entity in the form of the PA.
[00:26:21]  They didn't actually, you know, suddenly have any bargaining chips to continue with to negotiate.
[00:26:25]  And gradually, you know, the strategic importance of the Palestinian struggle, you know, vis-a-vis the Arab world, like it, you know, I think it's very diminished.
[00:26:34]  I mean, yeah.
[00:26:35]  And, you know, I think that it's very, I want to be careful when I say that because I think that a lot of people, particularly white leftists, are very blasé when they say that and are speaking something into reality by referring it to that, by referring it to it that way, as we are now seeing unfold.
[00:26:52]  But I do think that like there, you know, there is like a degree to which, like, yeah, like the Oslo process, it's not the degree, it is the Oslo process fundamentally, as many Palestinian critics and, you know, especially like Edward Saeed or Rashid Khalidi have pointed out over the years, was, you know, this was its effect and realistically its design.
[00:27:11]  It was an amazing temporary like, you know, solution to something that like definitionally cannot have a permanent one that is not either the complete genocide of the Palestinians or a one-state reality, which is something that requires, by the way, that is not the end of a conversation.
[00:27:28]  That's the beginning of a conversation.
[00:27:29]  Absolutely.
[00:27:30]  Like it's, you know, like it's a real act of moral imagination and daring.
[00:27:35]  I would say too, to like, to people who, you know, still sort of somehow they do it.
[00:27:42]  I don't know.
[00:27:42]  I don't know if I could find the moral headspace to do this myself, even if I was getting paid to.
[00:27:48]  But to defend Israel as something other than it is, because I see that a lot from its defenders.
[00:27:54]  You know, Israel is like an idea rather than Israel as a reality.
[00:27:58]  And like to that, I want to say like there is no other Israel.
[00:28:01]  Like there is the Israel of today, and there is the Israel that is doing these things.
[00:28:05]  And there's the Israel that takes land, that kills people, that bombs houses and kills little babies.
[00:28:10]  Like there isn't a second, you know, moral, hidden Israel to be uncovered behind that.
[00:28:17]  And I think, you know, it's apartheid really is like the perfect term for it.
[00:28:22]  And you can really just substitute, this is what I always do.
[00:28:25]  You can just substitute Israel with apartheid era South Africa in any conversation you have.
[00:28:30]  And you can make the exact same points.
[00:28:32]  And on the flip of that, any defenders of Israel too, I mean, just even a lot of their defenses of it echo the defenses that people made about South Africa.
[00:28:43]  And this is what's important because people will say, like, well, hold on.
[00:28:46]  In South Africa, it was about race.
[00:28:48]  And like there, they had like, it was all about race.
[00:28:51]  And it's not about race here.
[00:28:52]  And it's like, you're right.
[00:28:52]  It's not about race.
[00:28:53]  What it's about is, you know, like being a Jew and being a Jew in the eyes of the Israeli state and being a Jew and not being a Palestinian.
[00:29:04]  And, you know, if we remove from a second, I think like the version of what apartheid was that has been told to us, which is a very, very narrowly, you know, like kind of skin color discrimination oriented version of it that doesn't take into account the extremely dense and complex legal edifice that was meant to support it.
[00:29:24]  You have a version of it in Israel.
[00:29:26]  And arguably, it's one that is way more effective.
[00:29:29]  It certainly lasted longer in a formal set, in a, in a formal array, as a formal arrangement.
[00:29:34]  And, you know, I think, yeah, I mean, you know, I hate to say it, but it's almost like, what is there more to say?
[00:29:42]  I'm really just sort of keeping tabs on what's unfolding right now and simply just, you know, hoping for the best.
[00:29:49]  I want to just, before we wrap up, I just want to echo something that you said, Noah, which is that to conceive of the one-state solution is the beginning of a conversation, not the end.
[00:29:59]  And that I think there's a real kind of like, I don't know, like, I'd say moral and ethical, like, or like a shrugging off or a shirking of one's own kind of like moral and ethical compass that comes with not thinking through what a one-state solution means.
[00:30:21]  You know, like there's, it takes a lot of courage to talk about a one-state solution because what it means is like actually envisioning a just and equal society irrespective of what exists now.
[00:30:34]  And actually in a total like, you know, after a total like demolishment or demolishing of what exists now, you know, and I think that your point about how people hide behind the two-state solution as a way and how, you know, in the case of the Oslo Accords, how that was used as a way to kind of denature in a lot of ways, the kind of what existed of the Palestinian movement at the time, you know, these things kind of coexist, right?
[00:31:02]  And I would just, you know, like you said, you know, dare people to start like proudly affirming that there is, that there needs to be a one-state solution, right?
[00:31:13]  Yes.
[00:31:14]  That there cannot be, there is no ethical or political or equitable balkanization that can happen.
[00:31:19]  And that includes the like continued establishment of the fascist state.
[00:31:26]  And there is also, I think, a real kind of important thing here, which is that it's, you know, the this is why like, you know, 60 years ago and 50 years ago, they, you know, in a much more serious way than is discussed now, there were a lot of debates about Zionism and racism that were sort of viewed as proxy, as Cold War proxies and, you know, like a bunch of Arab states trampling on the memory of the Holocaust.
[00:31:52]  And there are certainly nuances in the debate.
[00:31:55]  But as far as like, you know, sort of divining like, you know, what you're describing, which is, you know, this kind of like, you know, like the broader like intellectual and ideological formation that prevents people from, you know, like seeing the possibilities of a one-state solution.
[00:32:11]  Like, I'm serious.
[00:32:12]  Like, you know, you have to think really hard.
[00:32:13]  What is it that is so rigidly presents people from thinking, I got to live in a country with one man, one vote.
[00:32:20]  Shucks.
[00:32:20]  You know, like, that's a hard, like, how do you get somebody to think that?
[00:32:23]  That's a lot of fucking ideology.
[00:32:25]  Scientists in America are still working on it.
[00:32:28]  And I think to me, it's, you know, it sort of just goes to show that like you have to, it's why this stuff was debated so many decades ago and why these debates about what Zionism was, in a sense, had a lot more political, public salience, because it was really dangerous.
[00:32:42]  Because if you got people to really consider what the fucking stakes were, it would lead you sort of to, you know, it would lead you to some pretty, to some conclusions that would be pretty, as, as, as, as some might say, politically inconvenient.
[00:32:55]  Yes, absolutely.
[00:32:57]  And I think that there's, you know, at least speaking as a Jew here and as a Jew, sort of with broadly left-wing opinions, you could say, my progenitors, my forefathers on the left, actually had quite a lot of cowardice when it came to this issue.
[00:33:16]  And I think that that cowardice kind of has continued up until, including the present day.
[00:33:22]  And I think when it comes to Palestine, like there really is, I mean, especially like as a Jew, that there is zero room for cowardice and there's zero room for like fence walking, prevaricating.
[00:33:32]  Like there's quite a lot of it.
[00:33:34]  And when you do that, when you sort of walk the line and, you know, try to take this really even-handed approach, I think that opens up room for what we've seen today, you know, and what we've seen for the past, you know, however many decades.
[00:33:50]  And that's one thing that really heartens me is I see a lot of people.
[00:33:54]  I mean, obviously, I was not around.
[00:33:56]  I mean, I'm 31.
[00:33:57]  I was not around during, you know, when these great debates were happening.
[00:34:01]  And those debates do seem settled.
[00:34:03]  And I think in a good way, in a way, it's kind of good that they're settled because now that there is no confusion, am I a Zionist?
[00:34:10]  Do I believe in Israel?

=== Radio Marti's Influence (16:32) ===

[00:34:11]  You know, like, should I make a Leo or whatever?
[00:34:13]  And try to work for this betterment of the state.
[00:34:15]  That is settled.
[00:34:16]  That is done.
[00:34:16]  That is in the fucking ground.
[00:34:18]  Absolutely not.
[00:34:19]  And it's been settled to me from the cowardice and from the prevaricating of people that came before me.
[00:34:26]  And for that, and for nothing else, I can thank them.
[00:34:30]  Because thank you.
[00:34:31]  Thank you, sniveling for fathers for teaching me how to stand up, right?
[00:34:35]  Thank you, fucking New Republic, and all these goddamn fucking every fucking magazine that you know.
[00:34:40]  I saw Marty Parrots once.
[00:34:42]  Oh, I wear it a gallows?
[00:34:44]  No, Tel Aviv.
[00:34:46]  Really?
[00:34:47]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:34:48]  Incredible.
[00:34:49]  I've told the story elsewhere, but I did see him and he was walking with a very handsome, younger guy.
[00:34:57]  14, 16?
[00:34:59]  Not that young.
[00:35:00]  Definitely like legal, but like, you know, definitely not in Marty Parrots' age range.
[00:35:05]  If you know what I'm saying.
[00:35:07]  And with that, let's start the show.
[00:35:25]  Welcome to Miami, baby.
[00:35:27]  How you doing?
[00:35:28]  Young Chomsky, play some party noises while I'm doing this.
[00:35:31]  Woo!
[00:35:31]  I love being here at Marco Rubio's foam party.
[00:35:36]  I am licking chests, leaking nipples, and slapping asses of 85-year-old men who have blown up airliners.
[00:35:43]  That's right, baby.
[00:35:44]  We are in Miami in not actually, we're on a like a, it's like a Zoom type program that we use, but we are joined by Noah Colwyn, who is calling in from Miami.
[00:35:55]  And by that, I mean technically New York City, but there's a lot of Jews in both places, so it's sort of the same thing.
[00:36:00]  Welcome to the show, Noah.
[00:36:01]  How you doing, baby?
[00:36:03]  I'm doing good.
[00:36:04]  I'm doing good.
[00:36:04]  That was a wonderful, seamless, tasteful transition.
[00:36:08]  Not racist.
[00:36:09]  And well, listen, you know what?
[00:36:11]  That's what we're working with.
[00:36:12]  Mazeltov.
[00:36:14]  I was homophobic technically, but it's not.
[00:36:16]  I mean, I wouldn't go racist.
[00:36:17]  It's not exactly anyway.
[00:36:20]  Yeah, there we go.
[00:36:21]  Yeah.
[00:36:22]  We are here.
[00:36:23]  We are bringing you here to the show to talk about one of my favorite pressure groups.
[00:36:28]  And I love, I mean, I might as well be a freaking chiropractor.
[00:36:32]  I love pressure groups so much.
[00:36:34]  Liz is shaking her head and frowning.
[00:36:39]  But we are talking about Cuban exiles.
[00:36:43]  Yes.
[00:36:44]  Cuban exiles, the final frontier.
[00:36:51]  These are the voyages of the most militant diaspora community.
[00:36:56]  No, Brace, you're unbuttoning.
[00:36:58]  I am.
[00:36:58]  I'll get a little exile-y.
[00:37:00]  All right.
[00:37:01]  So listeners, I have a gold chain on and a slightly hairy chest.
[00:37:06]  But Liz, what was your question?
[00:37:07]  I was saying, why are we talking about them?
[00:37:12]  I mean, my guess is, as the guy you asked to come talk about it, is because I have a show that talks about them in some measure.
[00:37:22]  And also because Cuban exiles are a fascinating and wildly influential group of people who in varying forms, as organized by the American government and in relation to the American government, have been linked to some really spectacular and terrifying events of the last half century.
[00:37:42]  Yeah, I would say also that we've had, you know, for dear listeners who have been listening for a while, if you guys can recall our previous episodes, one with Noah Colwyn on the lobby, the documentary about the lobby, the Israeli lobby.
[00:37:58]  We'll be talking about that probably in a little bit.
[00:38:03]  But also our episode on the Ukrainian lobby in both, you know, the US and Canada and talking about the ways in which kind of four, I mean, Ukrainian lobby is, you know, a bit more informal, we'll say, but the way these kind of foreign lobbies take shape and historically, what kind of like political role they've played.
[00:38:25]  And the Cuban, you know, the Cuban exiles, for people who've been listening to our series on JFK, which is ongoing for the rest of our lives.
[00:38:36]  You know, these are a group, you know, after the revolution in Cuba that were quite useful to the U.S. and deployed for many reasons, not just within the U.S. or in Miami.
[00:38:50]  I mean, we'll talk about that, but also like around the globe for various reasons.
[00:38:56]  So it's a really interesting history, but also not completely and totally divorced from, you know, what's going on today.
[00:39:04]  Yes.
[00:39:04]  And I mean, I think like one good place to start is with this clip that I'm going to put in the chat.
[00:39:09]  But like the gist of it is that like you have, you know, like the Cuban exiles organized as a political force in America today receive millions of dollars.
[00:39:20]  They receive them through the National Endowment for Democracy, a private organization that disperses federal grants for the purpose of things like Radio Free Europe.
[00:39:28]  Radio Free Europe, Radio Freedom, yeah, Radio Free Asia and Radio Marti.
[00:39:35]  Okay, I know the role in the R there, I feel like I can get out of line with that.
[00:39:39]  Radio Marti.
[00:39:40]  There's also Truanon podcast and Chapo.
[00:39:42]  Yeah, yeah, Truanon, Bobak, Chapo, and Memoirs of a Geishapod.
[00:39:48]  And so the like, so there's this, you know, like this clip, you know, Radio Marti runs an article talking about the multi-millionaire Jew called George Soros who is influencing American politics.
[00:40:00]  Never.
[00:40:01]  And it's like, why is it detected?
[00:40:04]  No lies detected.
[00:40:05]  All right.
[00:40:05]  So whether or not the provenance of such a claim is true or not, we can all agree that it's not nice to say those words in that order on such a venue.
[00:40:15]  And recognizing that it is not nice, I think we can agree that it's not something that like the U.S. government should be funding.
[00:40:21]  So why is this emanating from TV Marti as part of Radio Marti or like this whole Marti network named after Jose Marti, who is a, you know, the most influential, you know, like pre-fidel in the in the in the time of the Spanish-American War, the, the most important, like the legendary icon of Cuban independence and revolution.
[00:40:39]  The Garibaldi of Cuba.
[00:40:43]  Yes.
[00:40:44]  Yes.
[00:40:46]  And so where I think our story would begin is, you know, with the Cuban Revolution and, you know, what our podcast talks about, and which is how these exiles, as they were filtering out after the Cuban Revolution was initiated in 1959, they started coming to Miami.
[00:41:05]  And I'm actually going to give you a clip that's going to be in a future bonus episode to run here.
[00:41:11]  So about two weeks after we arrived in Miami, we went to the refugee office.
[00:41:16]  And there was a very nice officer from the Immigration Service sitting at a desk advising Cuban refugees.
[00:41:24]  Cuban refugees have it different than Central American refugees who get accosted and deported.
[00:41:31]  Cuban refugees get a green card and a parade in Miami.
[00:41:35]  And back then, we also got the privilege of a one-way airplane ticket to anywhere in the United States we wanted to go as long as we promised not to return to settle in Miami.
[00:41:49]  They would also give us food stamps and access to medical care if we needed it.
[00:41:56]  So this is Jose Peritiera.
[00:41:58]  He was a lawyer for Elien Gonzalez's father.
[00:42:01]  He's an immigration attorney based in D.C. and a Cuban American himself, very knowledgeable about this stuff.
[00:42:06]  And we will have a bonus episode interview on Blowback that you can listen to at an undetermined point in the future.
[00:42:13]  But I think that that snippet sort of nicely shows about how, you know, the radical Cuban exile community, you know, that we sort of talked about is, you know, it's having the state support in one example, just one example that continues to this day through the stuff like Radio Marti or publications like Cubanet.
[00:42:32]  And then you also have, you know, this other thing where you have just like the very nature of what the Cuban exiles arriving in Miami did, which was to transform a city with Cuban, the Cuban-American community at the core of it and becoming so influential, you know, what it ultimately created in terms of, you know, giving weight to radical exile politics.
[00:42:57]  Yeah, and you also can't miss out on the like thousands, I think I could safely say, acts of terrorism, many of which were pretty spectacular, including blowing up an airliner full of civilians, you know, bombings As recently as like the early 2000s, I mean, probably more recently than that, but at least that I know about.
[00:43:16]  And the dispersal of a lot of these exiles into death squads, not only throughout South and Central America, but through Asia and through Europe as well, and in America, too.
[00:43:27]  Yeah, and in America as well.
[00:43:28]  So in that way, I think the Cuban exiles actually, it's funny that they are really one of these sort of nexus points that we talk about between us, almost every subject that we've talked about on this podcast, which is, of course, like intelligence, spider network stuff, JFK stuff, the lobby.
[00:43:47]  I mean, really, like they connect essentially to all of it.
[00:43:50]  I think in like broad strokes, you know, sort of like the history as it sort of can relate to our story is that, you know, the Cuban exiles and the people who mostly came to America at the outset of the Cuban Revolution were the people who had connections to America and the most thing, you know, the most reasons to come, which is a dynamic that we describe in the show.
[00:44:11]  And, you know, when those exiles get to Miami, they are immediately accommodated by the American government.
[00:44:18]  And so from the very get-go, there are, you know, counter-revolutionary training camps that are set up.
[00:44:23]  There are, you know, there, there are multiple counter-revolutionary groups that are made active and that receive clandestine funding.
[00:44:30]  And immediately, you know, sabotage and terror campaign efforts begin.
[00:44:33]  And so simultaneously, you also have, especially with the Bay of Pigs invasion, the development of a political front, you know, that supposedly represents this umbrella group, the Frente later called the Cuban Revolutionary Council, that is, you know, like the figurehead of this community.
[00:44:52]  And so there is a defined like group of people who are affiliated with these political entities, associations that endure later into the decade, you know, that are used for, from the get-go, terrorism, sabotage, assassinations, and all sorts of things that the American government is doing to Cuba and will later do elsewhere, but not necessarily with the same public seal of approval that they had in operating against Castro.
[00:45:21]  Yeah, I mean, something that gets mentioned with a lot of the, and that you touched on there with a lot of the JFK stuff is just how many fucking training camps there were set up in like the, you know, the late 50s, early 60s, or throughout the 60s for Cuban exiles.
[00:45:37]  I mean, it seems like everywhere throughout the Florida marshes, there seems to be like 15 guys with like M1 Garand shooting at cutouts of Castro.
[00:45:45]  I mean, they had him in New Orleans.
[00:45:48]  It's sort of suspendous.
[00:45:49]  Like these guys had money and they had a lot of heavy weaponry.
[00:45:53]  No, like we mentioned in the show, it's basically like, you know, bases, like base camps that were set up all along the Gulf, which were used, you know, obviously as training camps, but also way stations as, you know, gun running and drug running, you know, continued into Central and South America, like all along those lines.
[00:46:13]  I mean, these are also the guys that pop up again, you know, in Iran-Contra.
[00:46:17]  And in Watergate as well.
[00:46:19]  Absolutely.
[00:46:20]  Like these are, it's, it's a, you know, these are.
[00:46:23]  You know, I'm not a believer in like the great man theory of history, but in terms of like a specific group of people, like these.
[00:46:28]  It's the Cubans.
[00:46:29]  They're a great group.
[00:46:31]  Well, so, you know, like to take out a, take a few names out of a hat, let's say, to give the listeners an idea of who we're talking about here, you know, because, you know, not all Cuban exiles and not all Cuban Americans.
[00:46:42]  However, Orlando Bosch, Antonio Vesciana, Luis Posada Carriles, these are some of the names of people who are openly acknowledged terrorists and who, with the support of the United States government, were responsible for acts of terrorism as varied as the detonation of, you know, a bomb aboard an airplane, killing, you know, dozens of innocents, as well as the killing of Orlando Letelier later on in the late 70s, a Chilean former diplomat whom Cuban exiles,
[00:47:11]  like Orlando Bosch, helped arrange to have killed in a car bomb in Washington, D.C. at the behest of Pinochet.
[00:47:20]  Yeah, I mean, we talked about that in our permanent uncle episode, one of our permanent uncle episodes.
[00:47:25]  I mean, at that point, the Cuban exiles were working for DINA, the intelligence agency of Chile with Michael Townley, and they were also dispatched to Europe to shoot a general.
[00:47:36]  Gayton Fonsi, the JFK investigator, has a great bit about how Antonio Vesciana was employed, who is the head of Alpha 66, one of the violent anti-Castro and anti-Cuban revolutionary exile groups.
[00:47:51]  Vesciana had Treasury Department pay stubs for a job at USAID that paid him in the six figures while he was working in South America, I believe in Bolivia, as a military advisor.
[00:48:05]  And there was an entire network, like these people truly were dispersed everywhere.
[00:48:11]  And these names come up repeatedly also later on, because as the 60s and the 70s and the era of terrorism sort of at its heyday, at least kind of gives way to the 1980s, these people become more involved in some of the scandals that you've already talked about in your episodes of the show.
[00:48:27]  And the flavor of what the influential, you know, the Cuba lobby looks like starts to change.
[00:48:32]  And that especially can be dated to the founding of the Cuban American National Foundation in 1981 at the outset of the Reagan years.
[00:48:40]  Yeah, it's interesting because, and this is something that Ben brought up on in one of our episodes about JFK.
[00:48:46]  It's an interesting way to kind of think about this time period where, you know, 64 up and through, you know, up through, I would say, I guess, into the inauguration of Reagan is this really, really tumultuous time in American history, you know, for a lot of reasons.
[00:49:02]  Least of which is that, you know, these campaigns of terror that the Americans are funding.
[00:49:09]  We said internationally, but we, you know, we should, I want to make a point again, although I think we have previously one time, but just to drive it home domestically as well, right?
[00:49:20]  You know, these kind of mirror the crazy instability and kind of power grabs that are going on behind the scenes in the wake of the JFK assassination and then the Watergate scandal as the intelligence community is kind of like broadening and hardening its stronghold on the American bureaucracy, I would say.
[00:49:41]  And so, all, which is to say that then it makes sense that these kind of terror worker terror networks that we see become kind of concretized or like, you know, official in its in their capacities.
[00:49:57]  It's like it all, it all kind of like changes into like bureaucratic wings with the, you know, welcoming of the Reagan years, which is really the, you know, the beginning of the, you know, the consolidation of the state under this new sort of, you know, military intelligence power that, you know, they'd all been kind of fighting against over the, you know, previous couple decades.
[00:50:22]  Right.
[00:50:22]  And until the collapse of the Soviet Union, the way that the Cuba lobby acts in America is through developing political clout and cash it.
[00:50:34]  And so here's where I will say, and to maybe do a patented blowback callback to the first part of the front half of the episode.

=== Government in Waiting (04:44) ===

[00:50:43]  Damn, blowback.
[00:50:44]  Where we talked about Israel.
[00:50:47]  I think it sounds normal and cool and is a helpful little heuristic for the blowback.
[00:50:52]  I'm not referencing a point backwards in time.
[00:50:54]  Well, but that's just me.
[00:50:55]  I'm built different.
[00:50:56]  It's actually not patented because usually like colloquially, when people say blowback, callback, they are thinking about Marco Rubio phone parties.
[00:51:04]  That's like calling back in their mind that.
[00:51:06]  So you might want to be like it's interesting because that happens in Israel.
[00:51:14]  Okay.
[00:51:14]  Okay.
[00:51:15]  I'll allow it.
[00:51:15]  I'll allow it.
[00:51:18]  So like, you know, it's, it's, I've reported on APAC.
[00:51:21]  Like I've gone to the APAC conference a few times.
[00:51:23]  I had a career as a teenage Zionist and, you know, was, you know, there's, I've spent a lot of time in the belly of that beast, so to speak, as Jose Marti might have put it.
[00:51:34]  And I think what I learned from, you know, reporting on that is the way in which like, you know, not so much like an identity, but like a specific kind of category or community marked by certain kinds of institutions, certain kinds of relationships to the state, and, you know, certain kinds of, you know, self-propelling myths about whether it's Zionism or the liberation of Cuba are instrumentalized for some really wild political ends.
[00:52:04]  And they satisfy domestic politics in a certain way without any obviously, you know, positive benefit, as we could see it, for the peoples of other places.
[00:52:13]  And in Cuba, it's at this time in the 1980s where I think you start to see with the Cuban American National Foundation a move toward that kind of model that you see with APAC that is all about developing like as much broad-based political support as possible in both sides of the aisle.
[00:52:30]  And they do that in the 1990s.
[00:52:31]  They're able to, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and after some more developments I'll mention later, they're able to get legislation ramping up sanctions on Cuba.
[00:52:39]  But what also happens is that the Cuban American National Foundation remains involved with these terrorists.
[00:52:44]  And the head of the foundation, Jorge Mascanosa, the foundation falls apart at the beginning of the 2000s in part because it has revealed the extent to which the Cuban American National Foundation, people affiliated with it are tied to terrorists and to which their agenda and their attempt to create and manifest themselves as a provisional government in waiting, not dissimilar to the Iraqi National Congress and Ahmed Chalibi.
[00:53:07]  I was about to say, yeah, yeah, yeah, very similar to that.
[00:53:09]  You know, it's there is an enthusiasm for violence that is part of their shit.
[00:53:17]  And I guess the only reason you don't see it with APAC in the Israel lobby, I would say, is because they have the IDF.
[00:53:22]  So there's no reason.
[00:53:25]  And, you know, to be a little bit blunt about it.
[00:53:28]  But yeah, I think that that's sort of where I see those two models kind of converge in an interesting way.
[00:53:34]  Can you explain a little bit the provisional government in waiting?
[00:53:38]  Sure.
[00:53:39]  So the idea is that like, you know, when you want to change, when you want to get rid of a government, one of the first things that you have to do is come up with a list of who you want in the new government.
[00:53:50]  And I think that it's very difficult for CIA guys and others to really, you know, sell these kinds of projects from time immemorial.
[00:53:59]  It is, they've not been able to do that unless you have this sort of fig leaf provisional government.
[00:54:03]  In the 1960s, as it relates to Cuba, that provisional government was called the Cuba Revolutionary Council.
[00:54:09]  And it was made up of, you know, like mostly like reactionary elements of Cuban society, like landed gentry type, you know, not like people who did not like would not be popularly elected, let's say, by any conventional measure.
[00:54:23]  And then, you know, in Iraq, prior to 2003, people like Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress were used, they were represented as an influential exile group that supposedly spoke for Iraqi interests at home and abroad, when in reality, obviously it was a group that meant to serve the interests of Ahmed Chalabi and the CIA to the extent that it was able to help the Bush administration develop the case for war.
[00:54:45]  And so now, and elsewhere, as it applies to the Cuban-American National Foundation, and as we are beginning to see, but really not that developed a sense yet in the Biden era, because the Obama normalization stuff kind of changed the dynamic of this a bit and made it very difficult for the hardcore Cuba lobby to be open in the way that it used to be.
[00:55:06]  And I mean the Obama steps toward normalization, because to be clear, he did not normalize.
[00:55:09]  Yeah, he did not.
[00:55:12]  But, you know, it really threw a spanner in the gears for these people because they really thrive on like a constant kind of like political agitation and they need it and they need it.

=== Cuban Exile Counterintelligence (02:11) ===

[00:55:27]  And that's, and that's the similarity, you know, that like they, that, because they would be that government in waiting.
[00:55:32]  Because what are you if you're not a government in waiting?
[00:55:34]  You're just a bunch of schmucks sitting on a bunch of money in Miami who whine about the good old days, but can't do anything about it.
[00:55:40]  I mean, one of my sort of pet passions is like, is exile politics from the 20th and I guess now 21st century.
[00:55:48]  I mean, some of one of the most famous sort of exile groups that had a large political impact, I think everyone thinks of is the white Russians, right?
[00:55:57]  And, you know, people who fled Russia after the Civil War ended not in their favor, oftentimes to Paris.
[00:56:04]  And, you know, famously, you know, there's these images of these generals and sort of like their decaying uniforms, decrepitly kept up by their like now unpaid, you know, manservants and pages and adjutants and all that.
[00:56:18]  I mean, even go back further, the French Revolution after Napoleon dealt like for years with and like even the Jacobins, like some of their biggest threats were always, you know, not just the people that they were facing in the salons in Paris or whatever.
[00:56:31]  The Bourbons.
[00:56:32]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:56:33]  Like these people like abroad in the Holy Roman Empire or whatever, who were plotting to kill him.
[00:56:38]  And that was not like a small thing.
[00:56:41]  That was like a major political concern.
[00:56:43]  Exactly.
[00:56:44]  And the white Russians, I mean, in that case, intelligence services in the West were not as bureaucratized and oftentimes not as effective as they are now.
[00:56:54]  And so while various governments did utilize white Russians, I mean, most famously, I believe Nazi Germany, with the various, I mean, there was a couple different Russian liberation armies that they have, one of which was like Soviet defectors led by Vlasov.
[00:57:09]  And then they actually had white Russians too, neither of which were very effective.
[00:57:13]  In fact, I would say both were very effective.
[00:57:15]  I mean, it's funny you say that because like the Cuban exile community has also been like an incredibly fertile ground for the Cuban government to run effective counterintelligence operations.
[00:57:24]  And the most famous of which involves a group called the Cuban Five.
[00:57:28]  It's a very, that is a wild and detailed story that's really cool.
[00:57:32]  And there's actually a movie on Netflix that's not half bad about it by Oliver Isa called the Wasp Network.

=== Political Arms and Terrorist Funding (14:03) ===

[00:57:38]  That stars like just about everyone you know.
[00:57:41]  Yeah.
[00:57:42]  And it like, I think it, you know, illustrates basically the Cuban government began running counterintelligence operations in the 1990s, not to plan any attack on America.
[00:57:51]  There's been no evidence that they were, you know, doing any plotting against America, but simply to spy on the exile groups that were running terrorist operations into Cuba and were caught by both the Cubans and the Americans, you know, you know, like by the American Coast Guard and stuff.
[00:58:09]  Like these guys are also like it's it's you know, they I mean, they show it in the movie pretty well, but like, you know, they, you know, like these guys, these are guys who just showed up fucking assault rifles at a resort and start popping off.
[00:58:19]  Like there's not a, you know, they're not like the like there's a mythology about this that talks about like, you know, like how these are people who wanted to simply, you know, do better for Cubans.
[00:58:31]  And it's like, okay, well, here's what they were.
[00:58:34]  They were guys in a fishing boat with a bunch of assault rifles and maybe an RPG.
[00:58:38]  And what they wanted to do was hurt enough people at a tourist resort so that people wouldn't feel safe going to Cuba.
[00:58:44]  Yes.
[00:58:45]  And 100% the plan.
[00:58:46]  And in one instance, using a using someone they recruited from El Salvador, they, you know, were able to, you know, execute a string of hotel bombings that resulted in the death of an Italian terrorist.
[00:59:00]  And 11 pretty bad injuries, too.
[00:59:02]  Oh, my God.
[00:59:03]  I mean, it was, I mean, it was, it's, it's a, it's, it was a, like, a fucking, like, like horrible tragedy.
[00:59:08]  And these are conspiracies that are operated, you know, with the expl, you know, like, like, not even tacit, explicit permission of the American government, because later on, the people who are involved in planning these things, when there are gestures that holding them to account, they are not held to account.
[00:59:24]  There's no legal accountability or anything.
[00:59:26]  And, you know, it's a real, um, I mean, it's a fucking tragedy, of course, but, you know, I think it's also, it helpfully illustrates the degree to which these remain ongoing issues because, you know, we aided and abetted terrorism against this country at the, you know, and American citizens have been killed in that battle for what it's worth.
[00:59:46]  Not that it should be worth anything, but, you know, it is political currency, unfortunately.
[00:59:50]  And, you know, our government does what?
[00:59:53]  It does nothing.
[00:59:54]  If anything, it sweeps it under the rug for all the obvious reasons that it would be so inclined to do that.
[01:00:00]  The U.S. government maintains, I think the State Department maintains a list of state sponsors of terrorism.
[01:00:07]  On that list are Syria, who got put in the 79, Iran, who got put on in 84, the DPRK from 2017, and Cuba from January 12th, 2021.
[01:00:19]  A measure that fucking Joe Biden could snap, like he could absolutely snap his finger immediately get, but has not chosen so far.
[01:00:27]  And if you, like me, are trying to recall when the last instance of Cuban terrorism occurred and you are failing, then I think you're pretty much in the boat as everybody listening to or probably speaking on this podcast right now.
[01:00:40]  But on the flip side, I mean, the U.S. is, like Noah is saying, inarguably, not subjectively, not like, you know, waffling and wiggling around with definitions, a state sponsor of terrorism against Cuba.
[01:00:54]  I mean, you talked, you mentioned the guy, Orlando Bosch earlier.
[01:00:57]  Orlando Bosch is, I think it could be safe to say, an international killer.
[01:01:01]  You know, he is, he has floated around from Cuba to the U.S. to all throughout South and Central Europe.
[01:01:07]  I mean, he's a, you know, I think one of the things that Blowback as a project has challenged people to do, and then I know we've said this elsewhere, Brendan and I have, my co-host, for those who don't know him, lovely guy.
[01:01:22]  You know, it's that when we start to look at the things about like, what is organized crime, right?
[01:01:27]  Like, what is, what is the mafia?
[01:01:29]  What are they supposed to be good at doing?
[01:01:31]  What are they supposed to do?
[01:01:32]  And it's like, oh, selling drugs and killing people, among other things, among other things.
[01:01:36]  And it's like, well, what is the CIA really good at?
[01:01:39]  And what is the story of their engagement with the group like these specific Cuban exiles suggest?
[01:01:44]  They're also very good at drug running and killing people on a vast and international scale.
[01:01:48]  And so I think that like, you know, there is a way, you know, respectfully, because there is a lot more to Cuba than just this dimension.
[01:01:55]  And there's a lot more to the Cuban struggle and the Cuban revolution than just this dimension.
[01:02:00]  But I think it's, you know, it is important to see the way in which like this struggle is, you know, it fits into a larger pattern and a larger story of how, you know, our intelligence services, quote unquote, better described as secret or clandestine services, are primarily concerned with, you know, doing those things that, which are secret.
[01:02:21]  They're not about like gathering intelligence.
[01:02:22]  They're about, this is their ballgame.
[01:02:25]  Yeah.
[01:02:25]  Death, destruction, wanton terror, and doing so in a way that like, you know, only like, you know, so as to, so as to make it difficult to see and decode.
[01:02:35]  I like to think of it as every economy requires a regulatory apparatus and the criminal economies requires one as well.
[01:02:41]  And then the CIA provides it.
[01:02:43]  Yeah.
[01:02:44]  It's, yeah, that's a good way.
[01:02:45]  I like that too.
[01:02:46]  And I also think it like, you know, there is a version that Hollywood is very good at selling us in which the CIA is sort of operating at like this level above everybody else, always one step ahead, plotting some devious scheme and so on.
[01:02:59]  And like, you know, like there's like, it's, it's half true, right?
[01:03:04]  I think that what like the machinations as it relates to the Cuban, you know, like some of these Cuban exile plots, for example, CIA didn't order some of these things.
[01:03:11]  It wasn't part of their plan.
[01:03:13]  But it doesn't fucking matter because for the times when stuff is part of their plan, these things are the acceptable cost to them for when, you know, like things don't necessarily go their way.
[01:03:23]  And sometimes for what it's worth, these things are what the CIA wants and what they get away with.
[01:03:27]  We just can never prove.
[01:03:29]  You know, it's just a matter of like, gee, these groups that the CIA funds and the, you know, the agency and the government, American government is behind goes off and these things.
[01:03:37]  Yeah.
[01:03:38]  What is culpability?
[01:03:38]  How do you define responsible?
[01:03:40]  I mean, I mean, you know, these groups, like, you know, you mentioned the raids earlier, these groups would stick on like 20 millimeter cannons onto fucking boats and then go strafe.
[01:03:49]  I mean, at first, mostly Soviet ships and Cuban ships, and then eventually just anybody who did business with Cuba.
[01:03:55]  And that is, that is, that is really like, I mean, you know, we're talking about essentially two parts of, you know, kind of a binary apparatus here.
[01:04:03]  You have the underground, really only semi-underground parts, the terrorist organizations, you know, and then you have their lobbying arms.
[01:04:11]  And they're both arms on the same body.
[01:04:13]  And I'm not saying that they both serve the same purpose or like that they have the same goals, but they're not connected.
[01:04:18]  It's literally they're connected.
[01:04:20]  They're the exact same people.
[01:04:22]  There is no difference between them.
[01:04:24]  I mean, they are, you know, oftentimes the people in, you know, in part of these lobbying organizations are veterans of some of these terrorist acts.
[01:04:31]  And they have close, I mean, and I mean really, really close relationships with a lot of politicians too.
[01:04:37]  I mean, you know, you always hear come election time.
[01:04:39]  Well, you know, you can't go too far to this left thing because Florida and the Cubans will vote against you, which I mean, you're going to vote against you no matter what.
[01:04:49]  But, you know, that guy we're talking about, Orlando Bosch, I mean, Claude Kirk, who is the fucking Republican governor of Florida, said, when I think of free men seeking a homeland, I think of Dr. Bosch.
[01:05:01]  This is a human being who, in his quest as a free man in seeking his homeland, helped put a bomb on an airliner that killed something like 75 civilians.
[01:05:13]  You know, I mean, these people are fucking sick.
[01:05:16]  And they have these, you know, they have these political arms that function in very similar ways to the political arms of, like you're saying, the Israelis.
[01:05:25]  And then like, you know, we talked about with With Maas Robosin, like the Ukrainians.
[01:05:30]  And, you know, it is, it is, it's sort of astounding how much influence that these guys actually do have.
[01:05:36]  And, and it's talked about in sort of this vague general way, but, but, you know, it really does exist.
[01:05:42]  I think too, like something that often goes unremarked on with this history is that in addition to the kind of outright funding of these like terrorist groups and kind of like, you know, creating these base camps and these intelligence camps throughout the Gulf and primarily in Miami, is that the kind of like secondary effects of having those organizations down there is there's just an additional so much money flooding into these like expat communities.
[01:06:10]  And so it's developing a kind of like its own sort of new nouveau kind of middle class lifestyle among these, like among these neighborhoods that then, you know, as the kind of these programs lapse or change or get moved and some of this money gets moved around, you know, it creates, it almost like has this cascading effect of creating reactionary politics among the communities like as these kind of like domino effects.
[01:06:39]  Do you know what I'm getting at?
[01:06:40]  And so when people talk about the kind of like, you know, like, oh, you know, the Cuban populations in Miami and the kind of local politics and whatever, these are like decades of work that the U.S. government has put in to kind of creating the kind of like soft lobbying of these, of the kind of like middle class and waning and, you know, waning middle class, working class neighborhoods.
[01:07:05]  But also along with the kind of more in the more official kind of like government facing capacity of lobbying groups.
[01:07:12]  And I would say that like the most important element of the war on Cuba has been and remains what has been in place since the beginning of 1962, which is the American embargo on trade.
[01:07:24]  And it's, you know, like Cuba is not allowed to do business with America.
[01:07:28]  It's not allowed to do business with American allies, which after the collapse of the Soviet Union is an increasingly large chunk of the world.
[01:07:36]  On top of that, you know, it's a like, I think that the embargo is the sort of spiritual embodiment and is able to accomplish a hell of a lot that Cuban terrorism is no longer needed for in the same open way.
[01:07:50]  And so, you know, if there is anything I would want to go out on, or at least like, you know, like emphasize with like finality as like the thing that is like the war on Cuba crystallized and advanced further, it's the, it's, it's what the embargo is.
[01:08:06]  And that like, if there is a thing to be done and there is like a, a, you know, a counter message to what the, you know, the Cuba lot, like the, you know, like the worst elements the Cuba lobby put out, it's to say end the embargo.
[01:08:18]  Because the process of ending the embargo and beginning to treat Cuba just like any other country, which were the steps that Obama began.
[01:08:24]  He showed that it's feasible.
[01:08:26]  Like it doesn't fucking matter.
[01:08:27]  Like Joe Biden won without Florida.
[01:08:29]  Like, who cares?
[01:08:30]  Um, the political benefits of normalization will you know eventually accrue.
[01:08:34]  It's it's it's common sense, blah, blah, blah.
[01:08:37]  And it sort of is a good litmus test because I think that also, you know, if somebody doesn't want to end the embargo, then what the fuck do they want?
[01:08:46]  You know, like, I couldn't imagine.
[01:08:49]  Like, they, whatever they would, whatever they tell you, it's not good.
[01:08:52]  I couldn't imagine.
[01:09:08]  So I think we should get into a little bit of specifics here with how these groups operate.
[01:09:12]  Because, as anybody who's at all familiar with lobbying, it functions in much the same way, except I would say a little more aggressively, plus, they blow up things.
[01:09:23]  But I think it deserves a little bit further going into.
[01:09:29]  So, what these groups do is, I mean, in much the same way that it looks like, you know, or that Israeli pro-Israel groups force you to take the ultimate, most maximalist pro-Israel position, these Cuban pressure groups force people.
[01:09:43]  I mean, and by force is actually the absolute wrong word to use there.
[01:09:48]  What they do is they pay you or they threaten you with withholding votes or whatever, or they, you know, or donate to your opponent to take the most anti-Cuba position, most pro-blockade position, most pro-regime change position that you could possibly take.
[01:10:04]  And they seem to be pretty effective at that.
[01:10:08]  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, I think that there's also, you know, it's, these things are also, it's important not to frame, frame it so uh that it seems like it's just a pretty quick uh, like it's a quid pro quo or anything.
[01:10:20]  Yeah, because it's also that, you know like, not dissimilar to the, to APAC and the Israel lobby, these things are able to act as kind of regulating forces that jibe with, like you know, America's broader, like you know, like strategic interest.
[01:10:34]  You know maintaining the embargo on Cuba is, you know, bad and dumb policy and and and and you know like one could argue against America's strategic interest or not, but you know it definitely isn't uh, against um, America's strategic interest uh, and you know people who use that term Like, really seriously and unironically, is like, you know, the fact that the war on Cuba and the constant militancy of that block absolutely, you know, is great for the share prices of every defense contractor.
[01:11:04]  And it absolutely affirms that, like, you know, for people who have a broader, you know, like whose anti-communist ideology has graduated into something, you know, even more nefarious and all-encompassing, it's another fight for them and another frontline.
[01:11:17]  And the longer they're able to keep that front open, the more and more, you know, the thing can continue to exist, such that, like, you know, I mean, fuck, like, the Israel lobby eventually has, you know, it doesn't, at a certain point, it's, influence only reveals itself in these really rare circumstances when it has to.
[01:11:36]  It's, you know, these things work invisibly if they're good, and they have been very good and effective.

=== Bob Menendez's Influence (04:38) ===

[01:11:42]  So, like, in Florida, for example, the mayor of Miami is this really like, you know, he's a true, we're a big fan of him on TrueNON.
[01:11:50]  Hold up.
[01:11:51]  Actually, I'm going to request young Chomsky just as a little, let's say, presaging the future, classic little Jewish Tamuruk magic here.
[01:12:01]  I feel like we're going to need a special sound for when we mentioned this man.
[01:12:06]  Because he, at least in my hoping, he'll come up quite a lot.
[01:12:10]  What's his name again?
[01:12:12]  Francis Suarez.
[01:12:14]  Yes.
[01:12:15]  So, like, he's basically the Miami mayor is a like, it's not.
[01:12:21]  It's like a fake mayor.
[01:12:22]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:12:23]  It's not like a because he has like a full-time job.
[01:12:27]  Yeah.
[01:12:28]  No, but it also just is like kind of a fake because it's a South Beach mayor, right?
[01:12:33]  Yes.
[01:12:33]  So he's, yeah, and he's also a Republican.
[01:12:36]  He's just big time party man crypto mayor.
[01:12:39]  Yes.
[01:12:39]  I mean, that's like his whole, like, he, his Instagrams about COVID were really fucking awful.
[01:12:44]  I remember like he did one of those.
[01:12:46]  But like he, you know, so he and Bob Menendez, who is the head of the Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate, you know, Menendez is a particularly like odious guy.
[01:12:59]  He is Cuban American himself.
[01:13:02]  He is from northern New Jersey.
[01:13:04]  The largest Cuban immigrant population outside of Miami is in North Jersey.
[01:13:11]  I think Union County specifically.
[01:13:13]  Yeah, it is.
[01:13:13]  And 100 murders and bombings between I think 1972 and 1982 related to Cuban exile community there.
[01:13:20]  Interesting.
[01:13:21]  Awesome.
[01:13:21]  That's sick.
[01:13:24]  I mean, it's where I'm from.
[01:13:25]  So I think it rules.
[01:13:26]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:13:27]  And, you know, it's like, it's like rooting for, you know, like the Giants or whatever.
[01:13:31]  I think that's tight.
[01:13:32]  Little hometown representation.
[01:13:34]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:13:35]  So Menendez is, you know, he is in charge of, he is in a similar position to the one that he had in the 1990s, where he was also calling the shots on Cuba policy in a lot of ways in the Senate.
[01:13:49]  And he then, as he is now, able, I think, like he is pretty clearly the choke point, federally speaking, in terms of progress on this issue and in terms of where, you know, Biden is being pressured because, you know, under Obama, there was an NSC guy whose portfolio issue was Cuba, which, you know, doesn't mean that like he was Cuba's best friend or anything, but does mean that like the Obama administration gave a shit about Cuba specifically in a way that like Biden doesn't.
[01:14:16]  And all of the Biden public announcements and, you know, like ways of engaging on Cuba so far have been, you know, shitty.
[01:14:23]  They've not been positive in any meaningful sense.
[01:14:25]  And, you know, Menendez is really sort of a key point there.
[01:14:29]  And he is a guy who has been invented with these folks for a long time.
[01:14:33]  You know, he in February, there was this really big event where Menendez and a bunch of other people, members of Congress and, you know, influential politicians, including our boy, Francis Suarez.
[01:14:45]  And they appeared at the Museum of the Cuban Diaspora.
[01:14:48]  And, you know, this is a museum and a group that is all associated with people who were previously on the board of the Cuban American National Foundation and have ties to these groups who are affiliated with Cuban terrorists.
[01:15:01]  So the year is 2021.
[01:15:03]  And Bob Menendez is speaking alongside Republican and Democratic politicians in the Miami area.
[01:15:10]  He is virtually speaking because of the pandemic, you see.
[01:15:13]  So he piped in virtually.
[01:15:15]  Oh, of course.
[01:15:16]  And he is speaking to a group that play a little game of Kevin Bacon's six degrees of separation is just like a hop and a skip away from people who blew up airplanes with like, you know, like for with no discernible moral defense at all.
[01:15:39]  And some people who connected to that do claim that they received the go-ahead from the U.S. government, specifically the CIA.
[01:15:47]  Yes, which is like, which is only worth taking with a grain of salt because it's like, if you were them, I mean, wouldn't you say that?
[01:15:53]  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:15:54]  We had a guy in like a big hat.
[01:15:56]  Say this to me.
[01:15:57]  Yeah.
[01:15:58]  I know.
[01:15:58]  That's the thing that's so astounding.
[01:16:00]  It's like, I mean, this is not some, you know, this is not.
[01:16:06]  I'm trying to think of a comparable situation here because it's like, you're not going to like, you know, meet with Mohammed bin Salman, who like kind of gets his lieutenants to carry these things out with him.
[01:16:17]  Like you're going to meet with like the guy who chopped up Khashoggi.

=== Chopsticks and Propaganda (06:35) ===

[01:16:20]  Actually, I think the guy who chopped up Khashoggi probably has met with the U.S. government on many occasions, certainly on the time that he chopped up.
[01:16:27]  Yeah, he definitely, I mean, I think he was a contestant on top chef.
[01:16:32]  Well, no, I'm saying when you could argue that when he was chopping up Khashoggi, exactly, doing the sort of knife tricks Benihada style, he was technically meeting with an agent of the U.S. government.
[01:16:43]  Ending his career.
[01:16:46]  Be a shame if people heard us talk about that hibachi meal that Americans got in the Turkish embassy, that did, or whatever.
[01:16:53]  Um but uh, but I mean it's it's, it's pretty wild.
[01:16:56]  I mean these guys, and they get money from them too.
[01:16:58]  Like you know the the, the Cuban lobby, is pretty well funded.
[01:17:02]  I mean well, it's.
[01:17:02]  So.
[01:17:02]  Here's the other thing though, which is that it's important because like, there are federal government ties in meaningful ways where, it's like, tens of millions of dollars at least are steered towards, you know like, these media concerns that just churn out Anti-cuban government propaganda of incredibly low quality.
[01:17:16]  Yeah um, and that is then used, by the way it's.
[01:17:19]  You know it's all vertically integrated um, because then, you know, the Biden administration, in march, releases the State Department white paper that is, lo and behold, filled with all these, you know, reports of gross human rights violations in Cuba that are sourced largely from, you know, publications and outlets that receive um, American government funding, like the National Endowment FOR Democracy, and so it's like oh, cool.
[01:17:41]  It's like, by the way, that white paper was compiled by the Trump, you know, under in the Trump administration, in the Trump era, but it was the Biden administration that chose to release it.
[01:17:50]  So you know, there is again, if we are looking at the, the decisions that are being made, we are seeing the influence of this lobby's actions um, and you know how we are able like, I don't think it's as easily identifiable as the Israel lobby, because it hasn't had to be as public um, in in the same way, but I do think that, like you know, we are seeing it work and uh, it's it's, you know it's uh, it's not good, it's not, it's not good.
[01:18:15]  I mean, what is on the table with the Biden Admin in terms of like, Cuban relations like, what are we actually talking about here?
[01:18:23]  Here is the beautiful thing about Cuba, unlike Israel Palestine, where you have to negotiate for a settlement between you know like like, meaning that like, you have to find a way to get an apartheid nuclear power to like, you know, stop occupying another people's lands and then create a new political sovereign entity to.
[01:18:42]  You know like like, have them start to live toward peace.
[01:18:46]  Um, in Cuba, like the, the two steps are, one, end the embargo and the and the attendant economic and diplomatic bullshit and then second, to start treating Cuba like another country.
[01:18:58]  Stop trying to disassemble the Cuban government and the Cuban revolution because, you know, the Cuban revolution and the Cuban government has accomplished some incredible things, when the American government is not spending all of its time trying to uh, you know like like, end it like and and reduce it into rebel, like they developed their own covet vaccine, and I think that it's, you know the reason is, you know it's because, like the embargo, if you know the reason that like, the exiles are perhaps ramping up their activity now and are trying to make sure that,
[01:19:28]  like Biden doesn't pick up the limited truth because Obama really it, you know like, by by leaving this thing like a half measure, half started yeah yeah well, like he really fucked.
[01:19:38]  So like, by making it this half measure, you know Like, now the Cuba lobby is preventing a return to that trajectory because, you know, if we're to allow ourselves to at least think a little bit big here, it's because like a Cuba unrestrained by the embargo, a Cuba unrestrained by this forever American war is something that would be very, very damaging for these people.
[01:20:02]  It would be a story so compelling and so meaningful about better ways for people to live, you know, that that's why they can't let it happen.
[01:20:12]  And it's all the more reason about why it needs to happen.
[01:20:15]  Yeah.
[01:20:15]  Yeah.
[01:20:16]  I mean, hell, I always think like, look at what they did to just little tiny Grenada, right?
[01:20:22]  And like what they were trying to accomplish there and, you know, the U.S. government invading the country and stuff.
[01:20:28]  And they weren't able to do that with Cuba.
[01:20:31]  And I think that is always obviously, I mean, breaking no new ground here, but that's clearly been a sore point on the U.S. government's record.
[01:20:39]  You know, I've been to Cuba.
[01:20:40]  It is a, I spent, I spent a few weeks there traveling around the countryside.
[01:20:44]  It is a right before the Obama sort of like made overtures to them.
[01:20:48]  In fact, I had to go through Mexico to get there.
[01:20:51]  And by the time I got back, I wouldn't have had to do that, which, you know, could have saved a little bit of money there.
[01:20:56]  Thank you, O bungler.
[01:20:58]  But you got obungled.
[01:21:04]  I did.
[01:21:04]  I got obungled, you know, but I mean, it's an incredible country.
[01:21:09]  And you can really see the effects of the blockade on them.
[01:21:12]  I mean, literally, like, you know, people always point to these, like, oh, there's these decaying buildings and all this stuff.
[01:21:18]  It's actually like part of the reason is because they can't fucking buy paint.
[01:21:21]  It's so expensive to buy paint for them.
[01:21:23]  And let's also be clear that like, you know, the effect of these sanctions, like that is the point of them and the embargo.
[01:21:28]  Like it is like, like that amiseration is what they want.
[01:21:31]  And like the economy scream.
[01:21:34]  And, you know, the Cuban government recently, you know, like Ruel Castro formally left power.
[01:21:43]  You know, informally, obviously he's still a very fucking influential person in Cuba, but his successor, like there is a transfer of power and there's been a series of, you know, like amendments to the constitutions, referendums, you know, popular legislative initiatives that were voted for by people on the island with overwhelming support, committing the country to socialism and so on within the last couple of years.
[01:22:05]  And these are fairly, you know, these are recent developments.
[01:22:08]  And so, you know, Cuba at the same time is also, you know, like there are people who we've spoken to for blowback who say that like, you know, as Cuban society moves in this direction, you know, there's, you know, and Cuban society opens more up and more Cubans get on the internet and the American government simultaneously attempts to do what it did many years ago and abuse those openings for our own ends to be stabilized.
[01:22:34]  Like that's a real risk and a real problem.
[01:22:36]  And so, you know, I think it restores a sense of urgency to the issue.
[01:22:40]  And even though Joe Biden seems to have forgotten about it, or at least wants everybody to forget about it and forget about what we do there, like you can't because, you know, it's, I mean, for all the obvious reasons, but, you know, this is like, this is what they want.
[01:22:54]  This is the plan.
[01:22:55]  Yeah.

=== Slow Knife Assault (05:33) ===

[01:22:56]  It's to make you, it's to do, it's the slow degradation and sorry, not degradation.
[01:23:00]  It's the slow, you know, assault.
[01:23:02]  It's the slow knife.
[01:23:03]  It's they want to, it's, they want to gut and bleed and bleed.
[01:23:06]  And they want, you know, it's, you know, they're, I don't think that there are many like, like, like, it's really like people will always try and tell you, especially smart liberals and media people and journalists will try and tell you that things are always really complicated and that things are like cannot be black and white and that things have to be really, really complicated.
[01:23:25]  Like, you know, they have to be morally dense or whatever.
[01:23:28]  And sometimes that is true.
[01:23:29]  But most often when they're telling you that, and especially when it comes to issues like this, it's because it's just like they want you to forget just how obviously fucked up and stupid the thing is.
[01:23:38]  And like the more and more obvious it is, the more and more asinine the defenses have to become.
[01:23:43]  And so, you know, like, like try and remember that, I guess, the next time you open the newspaper.
[01:24:10]  In case you haven't yet, like, subscribe, listen, blowback season two.
[01:24:16]  Right.
[01:24:17]  The way to do it is go to your browser, go to stitcher.com.
[01:24:21]  Don't do that.
[01:24:22]  Don't do that.
[01:24:23]  Brace, Brace.
[01:24:24]  It's not, I promise I won't give the pornhub link.
[01:24:26]  Okay.
[01:24:28]  Go to your browser.
[01:24:30]  Go to your browser, www.pornhub.stitch.
[01:24:32]  No, no, no, no.
[01:24:34]  Do not tell them about that, dude.
[01:24:35]  I'm trying not to get that out.
[01:24:36]  All right.
[01:24:37]  Sorry.
[01:24:37]  Okay.
[01:24:37]  www.stitcher.com slash premium.
[01:24:40]  You got to go in your browser, select a monthly plan, and then when you are purchasing, enter the promo code blowback, and you will get a free month of listening.
[01:24:48]  Here's a tip.
[01:24:49]  It turns out there's a glitch with your system, with their system.
[01:24:52]  It says you get just a week free.
[01:24:54]  It turns out you do get that month free and you get another week.
[01:24:57]  So if you sign up this week with that free trial, you will get to listen to the rest of the show in its premium run before everyone else.
[01:25:05]  If you sign up with the promo code Blowback.
[01:25:08]  And if you sign up with that promo code, we're so excited to announce that Trunon is going to be matching those signups with donations to the Cuban American National Foundation.
[01:25:18]  Oh, amazing.
[01:25:19]  It's, I like, they're going to be so happy to hear that when I go tell them after this.
[01:25:23]  I wasn't paying attention for most of the episode, but I do like Cuba.
[01:25:27]  And I feel like a Cuban-American thing is pretty cool.
[01:25:29]  Like, I'm American.
[01:25:30]  Yes, I like Cuba.
[01:25:31]  Exactly.
[01:25:32]  So, because that's what this is all about.
[01:25:34]  Yeah.
[01:25:35]  Friendship.
[01:25:35]  We're trying to build fucking bridges here.
[01:25:37]  A bridge from fucking Miami to Cuba.
[01:25:40]  Because here's the fucking thing.
[01:25:42]  Let me rap at you fucking losers real quick.
[01:25:45]  There is one, forget the Cuban revolution.
[01:25:48]  Forget the Cuban counter revolution.
[01:25:50]  Forget any, the American revolution.
[01:25:53]  There is one revolution for the 21st century.
[01:25:56]  That is Bitcoin.
[01:25:58]  That's Bitcoin.
[01:25:59]  And so here today on True and On Podcast, I would like to announce something.
[01:26:04]  We are moving to Miami.
[01:26:07]  Mayor Suarez has made us an offer that we cannot refuse.
[01:26:09]  We are buying 0.25 Bitcoin from him.
[01:26:12]  He is giving us an actual large, like sort of round plaque with a money type B symbol on it.
[01:26:19]  And we're buying.
[01:26:21]  We've been assured there's no surveillance equipment on the inside of that coin, by the way.
[01:26:25]  No, They did tell us to mount on the wall of our studio, which, by the way, beachfront.
[01:26:30]  And Liz and I bought a little timeshare, although I didn't tell her.
[01:26:34]  I also bought the other time for the timeshare.
[01:26:36]  And I'm going to leave a big mess that she has to clean up.
[01:26:38]  But yeah, so the future, you will be like, oh, why is the audio quality so bad?
[01:26:44]  Because the recording on fucking jet skis, fuck you.
[01:26:46]  Yeah.
[01:26:48]  Also, the podcast exclusively through the Ethereum network.
[01:26:51]  Exactly.
[01:26:52]  You literally can't listen to it because it costs so much money to access everything.
[01:26:57]  You can't listen to it because it only exists on the NFP.
[01:27:01]  Yeah.
[01:27:01]  No fucking penis.
[01:27:02]  Ha ha.
[01:27:04]  Nice fucking podcast, man.
[01:27:07]  Sorry.
[01:27:08]  We are proud to be sponsored by Mayor Suarez.
[01:27:11]  We are proud to be sponsored by the Cuban National Foundation.
[01:27:15]  We are proud to be sponsored by Castle Bank and Michael Townley.
[01:27:19]  White Castle.
[01:27:20]  White Castle.
[01:27:21]  Let's not get it.
[01:27:23]  We are sponsored by the IDF.
[01:27:25]  We're sponsored by that picture of, you know, where like Hitler's meeting the alien.
[01:27:29]  The guy who took that photo is also donating quite a lot of money to sponsor the podcast.
[01:27:34]  I'm telling you, we are sponsored the fuck up right now.
[01:27:36]  Yes.
[01:27:36]  The first ever image of an alien, like a gray alien smoking weed.
[01:27:42]  Also, someone did tell me that dolphins are just evolved or devolved gray aliens.
[01:27:47]  And so guess what's in Miami?
[01:27:49]  The fucking dolphins.
[01:27:51]  So fuck you.
[01:27:52]  My passadism.
[01:27:55]  My name is Brace.
[01:27:56]  I'm Liz.
[01:27:58]  I'm Noah.
[01:27:59]  We are joined, of course, by the top Cuban DJ.
[01:28:05]  We got, you remember all those fucking stories about how they're bringing Cuban rap, like the CIA is like, you know, making inroads with Cuban rappers or the NED, whatever, USAID, all the fucking same thing.
[01:28:14]  Jan Chomsky was actually the DJ they had on the ones and twos there.
[01:28:17]  So that's combining a couple of my greatest passions, which is Latinx, rap music, and Young Chomsky.
[01:28:24]  And so we are a podcast called Truanon.
[01:28:27]  We'll see you next time.
[01:28:29]  Bye-bye.