True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 492: Sumud Flotilla
Aired: 2025-09-29
Duration: 01:31:45


=== Build Back Better (08:32) ===

[00:00:00]  And propuesta por assemblea general de los pueblos el naciones unidas vamos a presentar una resolución que diga que se ordena a la naciones unidas la configuración de unejercito de la salvación del mundo que tiene como primera tarea liberar a Palestina.
[00:00:53]  Welcome.
[00:00:54]  The true Anne is in session.
[00:00:57]  Hello, hello, hello, everyone.
[00:00:59]  I'm Liz.
[00:01:00]  My name is Brace.
[00:01:01]  We are, of course, joined by producer Young Chomsky.
[00:01:04]  There he is.
[00:01:05]  And this is Tronan.
[00:01:06]  Hello.
[00:01:07]  Hello.
[00:01:08]  God, Liz.
[00:01:10]  It's been an amazing week here at the UN.
[00:01:14]  You got caught in a traffic jam or like a traffic stop, didn't you?
[00:01:17]  I got caught.
[00:01:18]  I did get caught trying to cross the street.
[00:01:23]  Similar to my good friend.
[00:01:24]  It sounds so less dramatic when you say that.
[00:01:27]  Emmanuel Macron.
[00:01:28]  Oh, yeah.
[00:01:29]  But I was blocked by Joe, not Joe Biden, excuse me, Donald Trump's motorcade.
[00:01:35]  And they really were like, yeah, you can't cross the street anywhere.
[00:01:40]  I think it was like 3rd Avenue.
[00:01:42]  And they were like, it's blocked off.
[00:01:44]  We got to wait for the convoy to finish.
[00:01:46]  And I'm like, I mean, if I was going to do something, I don't need to be in the street when I do it, right?
[00:01:54]  And he asked me, what do you mean?
[00:01:55]  I said, well, if I was going to do something in this situation, I could probably just as easily do it from where I'm standing now.
[00:02:05]  And he gave me advice.
[00:02:07]  Yeah.
[00:02:07]  He said, you absolutely could.
[00:02:09]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:02:09]  He's like, you can actually go moon the motorcade over there.
[00:02:12]  And so that's what I did.
[00:02:14]  I just mooning.
[00:02:16]  People don't like that.
[00:02:17]  I think now in today's woke environment, if I moon somebody, there would be like an Instagram story being like, hey, y'all, we need to talk to the community about this guy, Brace.
[00:02:28]  He did sexual harassment by showing his intimate areas to people on a school bus.
[00:02:35]  I do feel like we have lost the art of mooning.
[00:02:39]  You've never mooned.
[00:02:41]  No, but I'm not a mooner.
[00:02:43]  You're not a mooner.
[00:02:44]  It's different.
[00:02:44]  Girls don't really moon sometimes.
[00:02:46]  I do think it is a boy, a boyish thing.
[00:02:48]  The boy, the boy, which is interesting because women love the moon from my experience.
[00:02:53]  Let's talk about that.
[00:02:54]  I'm all in that trouble just because you were going to the Turkish embassy.
[00:02:57]  I was.
[00:02:58]  I was, but let's talk about the UN before we get into the rest of today's show.
[00:03:03]  Yeah.
[00:03:04]  Yes.
[00:03:05]  Did you go to the General Assembly?
[00:03:07]  Of course, naturally.
[00:03:12]  Every General Assembly I'm there.
[00:03:13]  No, it was the 80th United Nations General Assembly.
[00:03:17]  It was in New York.
[00:03:18]  I just want to say real quick, first of all, it was a mess.
[00:03:23]  It was a mess.
[00:03:24]  It was kind of wild.
[00:03:25]  It did not get that much coverage in the U.S., but every other country was like, what the fuck is this event?
[00:03:34]  I, you know, I, every year when the UN General Assembly happens, I like to walk around kind of the UN area.
[00:03:42]  Yeah.
[00:03:42]  And this year was no different.
[00:03:44]  The plaza?
[00:03:45]  Yeah, not, well, you can't really get to the plaza.
[00:03:48]  That's true.
[00:03:50]  During General Assembly, like during the opening week or whatever.
[00:03:52]  But you can kind of walk around, like kind of near Tudor City and stuff.
[00:03:56]  And it is, it's fantastic.
[00:03:58]  It's like being in Star Wars.
[00:04:00]  Lisa proposed that the Senate give immediately emergency powers to the Supreme Chancellor.
[00:04:10]  Because everyone's got their funny little costumes on.
[00:04:12]  They've got crazy hats.
[00:04:14]  Every general's there with their little braids.
[00:04:17]  Not really sure why they're being brought to the UN, but they are.
[00:04:20]  And kind of everybody, I remember the first time when I first, I also, you know what?
[00:04:23]  Frankly, and people are going to get mad.
[00:04:25]  People are going to make some Instagram stories about this one too.
[00:04:27]  The first time I went to the UN, three years ago, some Filipinos, blah, blah, blah, because Marcos was coming to the U.S., even though there's a warrant, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:04:38]  I saw a genuine no shit dwarf cop with a gun, a real gun.
[00:04:45]  Is this what started the whole short cop thing?
[00:04:48]  Yeah, I have a picture of it.
[00:04:49]  And I, God, I wish I had gotten a picture of the face.
[00:04:52]  They were a short cop.
[00:04:53]  But it's just crazy.
[00:04:54]  The NYPD is just all over the place with their physical requirements.
[00:05:02]  But this year was no different.
[00:05:03]  I went and I saw everybody in their tall peaked hats and walked.
[00:05:08]  Two hats, tall peaked hats, short cops.
[00:05:10]  Yeah.
[00:05:12]  But it seemed like it was kind of a disaster internally inside the UN.
[00:05:16]  Well, I do want to mention the theme, which apparently they have themes, which feels like gauche for the UN.
[00:05:23]  I'm like, I don't think you need a theme.
[00:05:24]  It's not prom.
[00:05:25]  It's not school dance.
[00:05:27]  When there's like new countries, do they have new countries?
[00:05:31]  There's new countries like every couple of years.
[00:05:34]  Not that often.
[00:05:35]  Like Somaliland.
[00:05:36]  Is Somaliland in the UN?
[00:05:37]  I got to figure this out.
[00:05:38]  But like, I guess Somaliland's like partially recognized.
[00:05:40]  I don't know.
[00:05:42]  But yeah, they have new countries every so often.
[00:05:44]  Western Sahara.
[00:05:45]  You know, you like, you, do they have like a party for them or is it just kind of like you just kind of show up and act like you're supposed to?
[00:05:54]  I have no idea.
[00:05:54]  This year, the theme was better together, which I just need to mention because you can't do that.
[00:06:01]  You can't reuse a slogan like that.
[00:06:06]  That was Hillary's slogan.
[00:06:08]  It should be diversity is our strength.
[00:06:10]  That would be nice.
[00:06:12]  And it's so, I feel like that belongs to the commons.
[00:06:16]  But better together, it's like saying, like, oh, the theme of the UN this year is Build Back Better.
[00:06:21]  You can't do that.
[00:06:22]  But they did do that with Build Back Better.
[00:06:24]  Everybody, like everybody built Build Back Better.
[00:06:27]  I know.
[00:06:27]  It was like Boris Johnson was doing Build Back Better.
[00:06:29]  Joe Biden was doing Build Back Better.
[00:06:31]  Everyone did Build Back Better.
[00:06:33]  It was the Triple B.
[00:06:34]  No one can handle it.
[00:06:35]  Something I've learned over the course of a long life is that there's only so many phrases.
[00:06:42]  That's true.
[00:06:43]  You know, that's the premise of AI, actually.
[00:06:46]  So, I guess it's like if Hillary had won, it would be really gauche if they used that.
[00:06:52]  But the fact that she lost, doesn't the phrase kind of go back into the common pool?
[00:06:56]  I guess.
[00:06:57]  Well, they kept using it.
[00:06:58]  Better together, 80 years and more for peace, development, and human rights.
[00:07:02]  Okay, fine, whatever.
[00:07:04]  We've talked a lot about the UN.
[00:07:06]  I don't know.
[00:07:07]  And the U.S.'s relationship with the UN.
[00:07:10]  I feel like every year it becomes more and more, I don't know, obvious, clear.
[00:07:18]  And it was particularly clear this year with the arrival of Netanyahu, who I believe right at this moment is at the White House or has just left the White House from his meeting with Trump.
[00:07:29]  Yeah, I guess they got Tony Blair on the Zoom call trying discussing what to do.
[00:07:34]  Tony Blair.
[00:07:35]  Have you read about this?
[00:07:37]  There's a lot of rumors of that Tony Blair is due to be the satrap of Gaza.
[00:07:43]  What does that even mean?
[00:07:45]  Like, I don't really know.
[00:07:46]  I mean, it's very, the reporting so far that I've seen, maybe there's something else out there, is fairly vague, but there's a rumor going around that Tony Blair, because remember people from the Tony Blair Institute were involved in that insane plan by again.
[00:08:03]  And I love dwarfs, so I don't want people to think I'm talking shit on them.
[00:08:07]  But a dwarf and techie from Israel and sort of all his cohort created this plan, which they got together with, you know, like the Tony Blair, whatever Institute and Boston Consulting Group.
[00:08:20]  I guess that plan envisions Tony Blair as some sort of like colonial governor of Gaza.
[00:08:28]  Can you imagine the Brits returning to Palestine?
[00:08:31]  Yeah, I know.

=== One Point Pews (02:52) ===

[00:08:33]  The world has been crying out for it.
[00:08:36]  Well, we took part in a minor UN adjacent little assembly at the Society for Ethical Culture.
[00:08:45]  We did.
[00:08:48]  It was a, it was a, it was like a, I guess it was like sort of a, a public event for the Hague group, which is the group of countries that are involved in, let's say, more aggressive action towards Israel.
[00:09:04]  I'm talking about like South Africa, Indonesia, and of course, Colombia.
[00:09:09]  That event was put on by the Progressive International and the Hague group.
[00:09:14]  And it was, there was a few speakers, a few Palestinian women that spoke.
[00:09:18]  And then Gustavo Petro, the president of Colombia, was sort of the main event.
[00:09:24]  And I got to tell you, it was nice to be back in the Society for Ethical Culture.
[00:09:30]  It was nice.
[00:09:31]  Yeah.
[00:09:31]  For people who don't know, we're doing our live shows there.
[00:09:35]  So it was kind of funny to be back, but in the pews this time.
[00:09:38]  I couldn't watching a president speak.
[00:09:41]  I couldn't help but think, the poor guy, he's probably got his whole entourage back there.
[00:09:47]  This place has no green room.
[00:09:50]  We don't need to put their insides on the outsides.
[00:09:52]  But I just want to say this.
[00:09:54]  Unfortunately, what little green room there is is taken up by the Truanon set for our live show.
[00:10:03]  Which is well packed.
[00:10:05]  It's well packed.
[00:10:06]  You know what?
[00:10:07]  We were, we were, we were, I tried to be conscientious of the fact that others use the space.
[00:10:14]  But I couldn't help but think like, man, I really hope the president of Colombia doesn't have to like sit there in those pews like we did backstage because we couldn't have room in there.
[00:10:25]  Did you feel like a little part of you was touching a little part of him?
[00:10:28]  Yeah, I did.
[00:10:30]  The speech I thought was, well, it was long.
[00:10:33]  I just want to say that.
[00:10:34]  It was long.
[00:10:36]  But it was.
[00:10:37]  It was kind.
[00:10:38]  Look, it was very cozy.
[00:10:40]  Yes.
[00:10:41]  We're in this like, you know, wooden, you know, old civic theater, very, you know, stained glass, the whole thing, church pews.
[00:10:54]  A very active and lively audience.
[00:10:58]  And he's so cozy, but it was a little, I think at one point you like kind of leaned over and you're like, this is what it must have been like when Castro gave those like six hour speeches.
[00:11:10]  I also kept thinking like, man, it would be so fun to be like a South American president because these guys are always, Maduro does this too.
[00:11:18]  Obviously, Chavez, Chavez did as well.
[00:11:20]  You kind of can just go on TV and be like, man, I've been reading his books lately.
[00:11:23]  You guys will get a real kick out of that.

=== One Point: Colombians Talk Tangent (08:42) ===

[00:11:25]  And that's what Petro did.
[00:11:28]  He's certain, yeah.
[00:11:29]  At one point, he talked about Hegel.
[00:11:31]  At one point, he talked about Beng Chu Han.
[00:11:34]  Yes.
[00:11:34]  Which was surprising.
[00:11:36]  At one point, he mused over the future of Colombia's space program.
[00:11:40]  Which, to be fair, I have some musings as well on that.
[00:11:46]  I think the real centerpiece, however, of his speech was his sort of reiteration from his speech that he made at the UN and some comments that he made at a protest outside the UN that might have gotten his visa revoked.
[00:11:58]  And certainly, I think a combination of all these comments did about creating a army of salvation, which the translator sort of mistranslated as the salvation army, which did confuse me at first.
[00:12:12]  And also kind of killed a little bit of the sort of gravitas of it.
[00:12:17]  Yeah, I agree.
[00:12:19]  But I figured out what he was saying.
[00:12:20]  It's sort of a, I don't know if that's going to be the official name that he has in mind.
[00:12:25]  But for those who have not been following, Gustavo Petro has proposed a multinational peacekeeping force, not the Blue Helmets, although this would be done by a vote of the General Assembly at the UN, a military force to, as he put it, liberate Palestine.
[00:12:45]  Yeah.
[00:12:46]  I think it goes without saying I am 100% in favor of this.
[00:12:51]  Well, I don't think it doesn't, I don't think it goes without saying.
[00:12:53]  However, I do think that most people would not be surprised you would be in favor of this.
[00:12:57]  Well, I say that.
[00:12:59]  I say that in a kind of jocular way, but I really, I can't actually figure out why it shouldn't happen.
[00:13:05]  And I've been talking to, I guess we talk about this a little bit with David in the interview.
[00:13:11]  It seems like legally he kind of could do it.
[00:13:16]  And it also goes along with my idea that if a war, and in this case, a genocide, you know, there's this sort of legal gray area about who controls territory.
[00:13:27]  I'm like, I think you could just like introduce another force.
[00:13:30]  And, you know, Gustavo Petro talked about, you know, he said he talked to the Indonesians and he said that you get 20,000 guys.
[00:13:38]  And then there's reporting that he talked to the Chinese, who with my, you know, admittedly not perfect knowledge of China's every foreign policy goal definitely does not seem in line with any of them.
[00:13:50]  So I imagine they politely heard him out and then said, we'll think about it.
[00:13:55]  But he invoked the Garibaldi brigades of the partisans in Italy, foreigners fighting the Spanish Civil War, also northern Syria, and said that he would try to direct Colombia's embassies to put pressure on other countries in order to get them to both adhere to this and to open their roles to volunteers.
[00:14:16]  He then invoked his own experience with the M19 guerrilla movement, which he was famously a part of.
[00:14:22]  However, he did go on a long tangent about when some M19 guerrillas were sent to Libya for training.
[00:14:28]  Oh, yeah.
[00:14:28]  No, that was actually a really interesting tangent.
[00:14:31]  Yeah.
[00:14:32]  I know that you know any of this.
[00:14:34]  There was a few times.
[00:14:34]  I knew about this with Libya just because they trained some, you know, like some of the Filipinos and Palestinians quite famously.
[00:14:44]  But Libya had these sort of like training camps.
[00:14:46]  These were kind of all over the Middle East.
[00:14:48]  There was a bunch of these in Lebanon, Jordan, up until a point in Syrian Iraq.
[00:14:55]  But he kept saying, like, yeah, the Libyan army, man, like those guys did not know about war.
[00:15:00]  You know, I wasn't there, but a bunch of my friends were there.
[00:15:02]  And they said the Libyan army that was trying to train them, they knew less than the Colombians did.
[00:15:06]  But that's where we met the Palestinians.
[00:15:09]  And then, and this was, this was kind of amusing.
[00:15:11]  He's like, and then the Libyans tried to get to get us to go fight in Chad.
[00:15:15]  And we kept being like, well, actually, I think we're going to go fight in Colombia, if you don't mind.
[00:15:20]  And so none of us fought in Chad.
[00:15:22]  Yeah, that was a great part of the speech.
[00:15:24]  I like speeches that aren't written.
[00:15:26]  He was just doing it off the dome.
[00:15:28]  Yeah, as was noted, he had a pencil that he kind of kept fiddling with.
[00:15:33]  However, there was no piece of paper.
[00:15:35]  No, you need a little prop.
[00:15:36]  And the pencil was sharp.
[00:15:38]  Yeah, it was.
[00:15:39]  As was his mind.
[00:15:40]  He, yeah, he shouted out George Lukash several times.
[00:15:44]  He also said Yalta was a mistake.
[00:15:46]  And I was curious where he was going to go with that.
[00:15:48]  But he said it was a mistake because that led to Stalin making these deals, of course, with the Western imperialists and abandoning the Yugoslavians, which of course led to the, or not abandoning, but sort of losing them in the sphere of interest and then abandoning the Greeks in the Greek Civil War.
[00:16:04]  And he said that Stalin, of course, should have pushed for world revolution.
[00:16:08]  And it didn't seem like he meant it in a sort of Trotskyist sort of way.
[00:16:11]  It seemed like he meant it in a more of like, why didn't you just invade France?
[00:16:15]  It did.
[00:16:16]  Yeah, it did have the tinge of that.
[00:16:17]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:16:18]  Yeah.
[00:16:19]  He also mentioned the caliphate in Spain for a while, which I was a little confused on where he was going with that until he kind of got to the point of saying like, well, we, you know, we Colombians have Arab blood.
[00:16:29]  Yeah, he was very insistent on that.
[00:16:31]  He shouted out Ennio Morricone and particularly the song Sacco and Vanzetti, which Joni Mitchell sings and says he listens to it all the time.
[00:16:48]  And, you know, would sort of repeatedly bring it back to, well, he also talked a lot of shit on Trump and the trend to Aragua strikes.
[00:16:56]  But he kept repeatedly bringing it back to the army that he was creating.
[00:17:02]  I think he said at the end, we need armies.
[00:17:04]  Yes.
[00:17:05]  Which I did like as a kind of call to action.
[00:17:08]  I think also, and this is sort of in line with some of the stuff we're talking about in our interview, is that he said in, you know, because he kept bringing the conversation back to Gaza, right?
[00:17:19]  And he said, you know, the people of the U.S. need to be the first to stand up.
[00:17:24]  Sort of putting like front and center the role of the United States and America in the genocide.
[00:17:31]  And that felt like, you know, we hear, you know, I think we talk about that all the time and we insist upon it.
[00:17:39]  And the U.S. media does the best job to sort of obfuscate a lot of that.
[00:17:44]  Or even in its criticism to place it solely on Netanyahu, who we'll talk about for his little speech at the UN.
[00:17:53]  But it was, you know, it was good to hear that, right?
[00:17:58]  And hear it very clearly.
[00:18:01]  Yeah.
[00:18:01]  And it's, it's sometimes, you know, it's funny.
[00:18:03]  I, you know, we've talked about on the show, I think, particularly in the past couple years, how often it doesn't feel like there's any like adults in the room or anybody in charge.
[00:18:13]  And one of the things that I always think of, I'm like, well, if this, this situation in Gaza is happening, this genocide is happening.
[00:18:19]  Well, shouldn't someone be like, well, Witzco just invade Israel?
[00:18:23]  And it seems like, no, but that's not even on the table for anyone.
[00:18:25]  And so I'm glad to hear that as maybe perhaps unlikely as these plans might be, that at least someone's talking about it, you know.
[00:18:34]  Petro had his visa revoked by the U.S. that night.
[00:18:39]  And there's a little bit of a backdrop, which we won't really get into here, maybe in another episode.
[00:18:44]  But there has been kind of a soft coup on Petro really since Trump has gotten in.
[00:18:51]  At the beginning of Trump's term, there was famously some flights that he wanted to send back with migrants to Colombia.
[00:18:59]  Petro at first refused to accept these.
[00:19:01]  And the U.S., excuse me, the U.S. rather has started a ramp up of sanctions since then and tariffs.
[00:19:09]  And I'd say a media campaign and a political pressure campaign, basically with the aim of ousting Petro, the former foreign minister, not a Petro, but a government foreign minister in a previous Colombian government, Alvaro Leyva, seems to be sounding out political forces in the country as part of like an accord to maybe get Petro out of there.
[00:19:35]  And in leaked recordings that El Pais, the Spanish newspaper, were able to get their hands on, he claims to have been sounding out U.S. government officials and congressmen and senators and possibly Marco Rubio with the aim of getting Petro out of there because he says, or the implication is that Petro's a cokehead.
[00:19:57]  Yeah, that's like what they keep like kind of floating, right?
[00:20:00]  Oh, he's a drug addict.
[00:20:01]  Oh, there's all this other, you know, he's, there's like a fair, it's kind of, you know, just trying to smear him, all this kind of stuff.

=== Isolation Of Israel (15:02) ===

[00:20:08]  Well, let's talk about Netanyahu.
[00:20:10]  Yeah, I mean, I don't think we need to get into the nitty-gritty of his speech.
[00:20:13]  I did, did you watch it?
[00:20:15]  Part of it.
[00:20:16]  Yeah, it's, you know, he's kind of playing the hits or whatever.
[00:20:20]  You know, I think like he didn't say anything new so much as he just kind of like beat the old drum.
[00:20:28]  It's worth mentioning it was a relatively empty crowd.
[00:20:32]  So over like 100 diplomats from more than 50 countries walked out.
[00:20:38]  And the ones that you would expect, you know, Iran, Qatar, Algeria, but also Kyrgyzstan, who's actually more moderate in terms of like all of those countries, but and also Ireland and Spain.
[00:20:50]  There were a ton of diplomats that walked out.
[00:20:53]  And this is all coming on the heels of a bunch of countries in the West recognizing Palestinian statehood, which Netanyahu called out specifically as like, you know, rewarding terror.
[00:21:06]  Right.
[00:21:07]  I want to mention, so he Netanyahu loves a prop.
[00:21:13]  Like he, he loves, he's always got visual aids, you know, he's always got his little posters and his things.
[00:21:19]  He wore this massive button on his lapel, like campaign style big button on his lapel during his UN speech with a QR code that if you scan it, presumably like if you're watching it on your TV and you scan it with your phone, I guess, and you click on it, it takes you to footage of October 7th.
[00:21:42]  Okay.
[00:21:43]  Like here's here, this is why you're talking about it.
[00:21:45]  I have to fucking mention that.
[00:21:47]  That is crazy.
[00:21:48]  No, I know.
[00:21:48]  No, I know.
[00:21:49]  I wasn't saying okay in that frustrated way to you, Liz.
[00:21:52]  I never would.
[00:21:53]  I say it about these October 7th fanatics out there.
[00:21:57]  These guys love watching October 7th.
[00:22:00]  I get it.
[00:22:02]  You know, you see, they're doing this Paramount mini-series, October 7th, which, of course, we're going to watch.
[00:22:08]  But it's just like, guys, we get that October 7th happened.
[00:22:14]  You showed us the footage.
[00:22:15]  You flew all these people out.
[00:22:17]  Remember they were doing that?
[00:22:18]  They were doing private viewings of October 7th footage for people.
[00:22:22]  Yes.
[00:22:23]  Oh my God.
[00:22:23]  I completely forgot about that at like theaters in LA.
[00:22:27]  Yes.
[00:22:27]  Yes.
[00:22:28]  And people were like, oh, I can't even talk about it.
[00:22:30]  It's so unspeakable.
[00:22:32]  But like, we understand all that stuff.
[00:22:36]  We still fucking hate you.
[00:22:38]  Like, that's the thing.
[00:22:40]  It's like, it's like, there's no footage here that's going to change my mind that you're like, oh, well, I guess it's, I guess it's okay that you like burn all these people alive.
[00:22:49]  Like, you know, I saw, I clicked this QR code.
[00:22:53]  I never do stuff like this, but I clicked this QR code on Benjamin Netanyahu's lapel when he was giving this speech at the UN.
[00:22:59]  And, you know, I just, the media is lying to us.
[00:23:03]  It's so crazy too.
[00:23:04]  Netanyahu and all these fucking, you know, freaks.
[00:23:07]  Do you see at that like TikTok influencers conference too?
[00:23:10]  Yeah.
[00:23:10]  And actually he said some things pretty plainly about like being in charge of TikTok now, basically.
[00:23:16]  And you know what?
[00:23:17]  And that's a mea culpa for me because a lot of times when stuff happens, when they're like, oh, the U.S. wants to buy TikTok, people always kind of come up with these really pad explanations.
[00:23:26]  Like it's because they want to change the algorithm because of Israel.
[00:23:29]  And I was like, I poo-pooed that a little bit because I'm like, that's a little like somebody who uses TikTok a lot explanation for an event like that, if that makes sense.
[00:23:40]  But you know what?
[00:23:41]  I think it's right.
[00:23:42]  I think that's actually just that is literally a large part of it.
[00:23:45]  Yes.
[00:23:47]  Yeah, he the speech was there was at least good pictures of like an almost empty room.
[00:23:54]  That's true.
[00:23:56]  I will say two things.
[00:23:57]  He did mention, he claimed that Iran was behind two assassination attempts on Trump.
[00:24:03]  We've covered that before.
[00:24:05]  But two?
[00:24:06]  I thought it was just the one.
[00:24:08]  Well, there's, there's, no, no, no, there's two.
[00:24:10]  We covered, we covered both, but they're both pretty similar and they're both not really like actual assassination attempts.
[00:24:15]  Yeah, they're like, it's like.
[00:24:16]  I think Netanyahu should stand in front of the UN General Assembly with a photo of Ryan Ruth and be like, this is an Iranian.
[00:24:23]  Who's an Iranian?
[00:24:26]  He's an Iranian national.
[00:24:27]  See, when you're not thinking.
[00:24:29]  Fomented by the IRGC.
[00:24:31]  Yeah, see, when you're not thinking, you can't.
[00:24:32]  One of the leading sponsors of, I can't really, I can't really do it.
[00:24:36]  So you thought about it.
[00:24:37]  I thought about it.
[00:24:38]  He also did the October 7th ratio math where he was like, imagine, you know, they massacre 40,000 Americans.
[00:24:47]  They take 10,000 American hostages.
[00:24:51]  So he was like trying to, so, but my point being that he was really, really focused on two things, it seems like one, the White House in America and his right-wing base at home.
[00:25:02]  Because he's always trying to think of how to like, you know, get those guys going back at home to save off his own domestic political issues.
[00:25:13]  He did, I do want to also say one last thing.
[00:25:15]  He had one line from the speech that was, you know, particularly gruesome where he said, did the Nazis ask the Jews to leave, kindly leave and go?
[00:25:25]  And he was using that as a way of showing that Israel is not behaving like the Nazis in asking for like basically forced ethic cleansing.
[00:25:35]  No, no, like being like, we're just asking the Palestinians to leave voluntarily.
[00:25:39]  And he's like, the Nazis didn't do that.
[00:25:41]  But the Nazis did, did do that like before 33 the Havara agreement and stuff like that.
[00:25:48]  Yes.
[00:25:49]  I don't know if I would describe it as kindly, but surely the Nazis, the Nazis were like, get the fuck out of here.
[00:25:55]  I don't think what the Israelis are doing is kindly either.
[00:25:58]  No, I mean, I think it's, it's pretty like, it's funny because if you, I mean, we've talked about the proposal on the show before, like this, at least publicly, what we know is like these weird, like, not Bitcoin, but like blockchain tokens for people who are ethnically cleansed where it's like, you can go and we're going to build you these like concrete apartment buildings in another part of the Middle East and you all go live there.
[00:26:22]  And maybe you get a token that's like worth your house in Gaza that's going to be overseen by Tony Blair.
[00:26:28]  It's like, I don't know who this stuff is.
[00:26:31]  Again, like so much of this, like the Israeli, like Hasbro stuff, but also just like the rhetoric from Netanyahu and shit.
[00:26:37]  Like, at this point, I don't know who it is.
[00:26:40]  It's like they're all just talking to each other, right?
[00:26:42]  But I think that's a big part of it.
[00:26:44]  I mean, that's why you bring up his own domestic issues because I do think that it's like, who is this being broadcast to, right?
[00:26:53]  One, the White House, Direct Line, and two, or two and three, Israel.
[00:27:00]  And then apparently, it was being shown in Gaza.
[00:27:03]  So, this is, I take this with a grain of salt.
[00:27:06]  I believe maybe part of this is true, but the second part is just completely, it has not been confirmed by a single person, but it was reported.
[00:27:13]  The Israelis say they did it.
[00:27:15]  Part of Netanyahu's speech at the UN was apparently broadcast into Gaza using loudspeakers on the Israeli side of the Gaza Strip.
[00:27:25]  He spoke, of course, in Hebrew and English, which is, I don't know if that would really work for a lot of people in Gaza.
[00:27:33]  But he also, according to his office, they say they took control of phones of residents of the Gaza Strip and members of Hamas.
[00:27:43]  There's zero evidence that this took place.
[00:27:45]  I don't know what the fuck that's supposed to mean.
[00:27:47]  But it's just like, I am assuming sometimes Israel takes, I mean, you know, they're capable of pretty advanced operations, but I don't know if that is necessarily the case here.
[00:28:00]  Also, if you're a member of Hamas, I think you should probably leave the cell phone at home at this point because I feel like Israel can track that shit.
[00:28:10]  But I mean, it was just that to me is just such, it's like this theater, right?
[00:28:14]  Like, it's like, even that, like, that's not actually to the residents of Gaza.
[00:28:18]  That's how people can report that he's doing that for whatever like psychological operations reasons, I guess.
[00:28:26]  But I don't know.
[00:28:27]  I mean, I will say one thing that did seem to be a theme of this year and really of like the past two years has been the isolation of Israel, the further and further isolation of Israel to the point where like the U.S. is really sticking with them in the way that like few other countries are, and certainly no other powerful countries are.
[00:28:48]  Obviously, Russia and China both have pretty hefty trade relationships and political relationships with Israel, but not integrated in the same way that the U.S. is.
[00:28:58]  And I think that we're seeing cracks in the right wing about this.
[00:29:03]  Because as we've said in other episodes, like if you're an America first guy, if you really mean that, which I don't know if all of them do, but if you're somebody, if you're one of the suckers, then, and who really takes all the rhetoric at face value, our relationship with Israel would, I think, trouble you if you have no religious reason to be a Big fan of the country.
[00:29:29]  And certainly the performances by Marco Rubio and the insane shit with Mike Huckabee, I think would make any mildly inquisitive right-winger be like, what the fuck is the government doing?
[00:29:46]  Like, why do we have this peculiar relationship with this just one other country?
[00:29:53]  But maybe that's a story for another day.
[00:29:55]  We have an interview today.
[00:29:56]  We do.
[00:29:57]  Yes.
[00:29:57]  Do you want to get us set up here?
[00:30:00]  Yeah, we are talking to David Adler of Progressive International.
[00:30:05]  And he is on the Global Samud Flotilla.
[00:30:10]  I got to be honest with you guys.
[00:30:13]  This was the sleepiest I've ever been for an interview.
[00:30:16]  Really?
[00:30:16]  Yes.
[00:30:17]  I had woken up about 20 minutes before.
[00:30:18]  I couldn't sleep at night before.
[00:30:20]  No one would have been the wiser if you didn't name it.
[00:30:22]  But now that you've named it, everyone's going to.
[00:30:24]  I'm rarely self-conscious on the show.
[00:30:26]  And frankly, this time I was a little because I was so, I was, I had a really, really crazy trazodone hangover.
[00:30:32]  But if you don't even say it, no one would know.
[00:30:35]  Yeah, but I know.
[00:30:36]  You're right.
[00:30:36]  You're right.
[00:30:38]  But whatever.
[00:30:39]  It's out there.
[00:30:40]  He is talking to us from a boat on the flotilla.
[00:30:45]  We make a lot of references to days.
[00:30:46]  I think originally you thought this might come out on Thursday, but now it's going to come out before Thursday.
[00:30:52]  So any of the like temporal stuff, take with a grain of salt.
[00:30:57]  Although who the fuck knows when you'll listen to this?
[00:30:58]  So maybe I don't have to say that.
[00:31:01]  But we're really, we're glad he talked to us.
[00:31:03]  The Global Samud Fotilla is a flotilla of, I think, like 45, 50 boats, mostly.
[00:31:09]  I think maybe one or two ships filled with aid that is made up of a coalition of people and volunteers from numerous countries, MPs from various countries, politicians, et cetera, but just also regular activists.
[00:31:22]  Greta Thunberg, famously on it, has also been on a previous, I think, single boat expedition.
[00:31:29]  And they are trying to break the naval blockade that Israel has around Gaza.
[00:31:35]  This is a particularly, I would say, important point right now.
[00:31:41]  Today, the day that we're recording this, tomorrow, the next few days, over what's going to happen to them.
[00:31:46]  I think there is a real chance that there could be some violence.
[00:31:49]  We've already seen actually quite a few acts of violence that were pretty clearly done by Israel.
[00:31:56]  I'm talking reports about the number of drone strikes that, and we're not talking about like predator drone strikes, but we're talking probably smaller ones, but with incendiary devices attached to them in order to destroy the boats and possibly kill some people to dissuade others from doing it.
[00:32:14]  They are going to be entering Israeli waters if everything goes right, which we talk about in the interview.
[00:32:20]  I don't know, today or tomorrow or the day after.
[00:32:23]  And it is real question of what happens then.
[00:32:29]  You know, we've had on this show before somebody who has been shot last year.
[00:32:34]  I think it was last year, maybe it was even earlier this year, actually, by the IDF.
[00:32:39]  The IDF seems to have no hesitation when it comes to shooting at to kill or wound foreigners, no matter what the passport is.
[00:32:49]  And so I think we're going to see a test of that, but also you know, a sort of test of international pressure because this flotilla, unlike the others, and we talk about some of the problems with this in the interview, has a international support in a way with Italian, I think, Spanish and Turkish ships and drones, apparently.
[00:33:12]  Yes, but I think there's a real question of what those ships necessarily the purpose of them is, because I think what everyone really wants is for them to escort them into Israeli territorial waters.
[00:33:23]  I'm not sure that that will happen.
[00:33:25]  Yeah.
[00:33:27]  Well, I think this interview was great.
[00:33:29]  It was so informative.
[00:33:30]  We went long with it.
[00:33:31]  I think it's so important for people to listen.
[00:33:35]  And please send it and share it widely.
[00:33:38]  And let's let's take a listen to David.
[00:33:51]  So joining us, not live, but alive from the somewhere in the Mediterranean, we have David Adler recently, I believe, transferred to a different boat after some mechanical troubles.
[00:34:08]  which maybe we can get into that some of you might have read about in the news.
[00:34:13]  David Adler, welcome to the show.
[00:34:15]  Where are you guys right now?
[00:34:16]  All I see is infinite sea at the moment, Race.
[00:34:20]  But to give our location, we're somewhere between Crete and Cyprus.
[00:34:25]  We're moving into a kind of high-pressured sandwich between Egyptian territorial waters and Cyprian territorial waters as we chart our way to Gaza, where we should arrive from the time of recording in about two days.
[00:34:39]  So walk, for our listeners who aren't familiar with what you guys are attempting to do, can you walk us through what is the flotilla And what is the project here?
[00:34:51]  Sure.
[00:34:51]  So many of your listeners will have seen these images for the past two years of frustrated attempts by aid organizations, as well as the international community to deliver humanitarian aid with land checkpoints basically blocked by the state of Israel.

=== Freedom Flotilla Siege (10:57) ===

[00:35:10]  And even more so these kind of psychotic images of Israelis themselves forming human chains or ripping up humanitarian aid that's supposed to reach the people.
[00:35:22]  Gaza, who the UN has since declared to be suffering from a famine.
[00:35:27]  But many of your listeners may not realize that the siege of Gaza is not two years old.
[00:35:33]  You know, the siege intensified after the attacks of October 7th, but for 20 years, Israel has managed every detail of what goes in, of what goes out, of who communicates, of who does commerce from inside the occupied Palestinian territory known as Gaza.
[00:35:51]  And part of that siege is at sea.
[00:35:55]  So they sustain a very kind of, let's just say, unorthodox interpretation of international law, which gives them the unilateral right to decide that you cannot approach the shores of Gaza.
[00:36:11]  And part of the, we'll get into this, the kind of the sort of really psychedelic aspect of this mission is that we're traversing the great Mediterranean Sea.
[00:36:23]  Many of your viewers or listeners will have vacationed in Mallorca or visited Secilia.
[00:36:29]  It's in their dreams.
[00:36:31]  But it's the same sea that Gazans gaze onto from their shores.
[00:36:34]  The only difference being that like theirs is heavily militarized, that the Israeli army has a history of sniping people from the shore, etc.
[00:36:42]  All this is context for what is called the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, which has existed for 20 years.
[00:36:48]  I mean, has been sending boat after boat carrying humanitarian aid to try to reach the shores of Gaza and to try to establish a new sea humanitarian corridor that basically refuses to recognize the illegal naval blockade that Israel imposes on Gaza and tries to create a new channel that doesn't depend on these checkpoints like Rafa, for example, where the trucks are famously lined up trying to get into Gaza to create a new sea corridor.
[00:37:14]  This initiative I'm part of now is called the Global Shamud Flotilla.
[00:37:18]  And what makes it exciting is it's larger than all previous attempts combined.
[00:37:22]  We're over 45 vessels from beat-up motor cruisers to secondhand sailing boats who are joining in one convoy back to the gills with humanitarian aid to break that siege and to establish that humanitarian corridor to reach the people of Gaza at a really critical time in the course of this genocide when Israel is re-entering Gaza City and flattening its infrastructure and devastating its communities and forcing its people to flee.
[00:37:49]  Yeah, I think people will be familiar with sort of one of the most, I guess, famous incidents in the multi-decade kind of long saga of trying to open up this new humanitarian corridor when in 2010, IDF commandos essentially stormed a vessel filled with Turkish aid workers and volunteers and killed, I believe, 10 Turkish citizens, one Turkish-American citizen, you know, claiming that there was firearms, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:38:19]  Obviously, that's never been proven.
[00:38:22]  And there's been other attempts too.
[00:38:25]  That was sort of like the most, I mean, as you said, it's been happening for 20 years.
[00:38:29]  There have been several sort of large-scale attempts during these past two years.
[00:38:35]  However, they've all been, as far as I know, with like a single vessel.
[00:38:39]  As you said, this is by far the largest one.
[00:38:42]  But the sort of saga of how we got here is, I feel like, worth telling because, you know, I know some people who are supposed to be on a rather large ship that was, I believe it's supposed to go from Turkey and then I think later Spain.
[00:38:57]  And there was a lot of clearly behind the scenes skullduggery on getting that vessel's flag.
[00:39:05]  You know, like, I can't remember what it was, but Israel kind of went over or went behind the scenes to the third world countries that the vessel was registered out of, as longtime listeners of Truanon will know.
[00:39:17]  Vessels are flagged all over the world, not necessarily from the country that they're actually operated out of, and was able to get that ship to not be able to sail.
[00:39:26]  Just out of curiosity, why do your listeners know so much about nautical because Brace is always talking about it?
[00:39:32]  I'm always talking about it.
[00:39:33]  I'm always talking about it.
[00:39:34]  The registry.
[00:39:36]  But this has been a, let's say, more, a little more grassroots.
[00:39:42]  I mean, I guess that was a grassroots effort too.
[00:39:43]  But this is with like smaller, oftentimes personal vessels.
[00:39:47]  So where did you guys start out from?
[00:39:49]  And what has kind of the journey been so far?
[00:39:53]  So what makes, so this is called the Global Sumud Flotilla.
[00:39:57]  And the reason it's called that is because it brings together several initiatives that many of your viewers or sorry, listeners will have seen over the past two years kind of combined.
[00:40:05]  So one is the Freedom Flotilla Coalition.
[00:40:07]  That's where we get the flotilla.
[00:40:09]  One is Sumud.
[00:40:10]  You may recall this large North African convoy that traversed Algeria, Libya, into Egypt to try to reach Rufa.
[00:40:16]  Very frustrated along the way through various forms of bureaucratic sabotage, and they never reached, of course, but those images were very powerful of people kind of loading in their trucks and trying to drive their way across the North African countries.
[00:40:31]  And then Sumud, that was Sumud.
[00:40:34]  And then the Global March to Gaza, which is another initiative where you remember people from all over the world were going to Cairo to try to march their way to Rufa.
[00:40:42]  And they got beaten up.
[00:40:43]  And they were heavily.
[00:40:44]  Heavily attacked.
[00:40:45]  Yeah.
[00:40:45]  Well, they were just beaten.
[00:40:46]  It was pretty interesting.
[00:40:47]  I mean, they weren't just attacked.
[00:40:48]  They were like tracked down.
[00:40:50]  The Egyptian authorities were like hunting these activists across Cairo because no one was organizing it.
[00:40:55]  It was kind of like an open call.
[00:40:56]  And they were going through every hotel, like knocking on doors, dragging people out of there.
[00:40:59]  I mean, it was wild.
[00:41:00]  Obviously, we don't have to go into the CC regime's complicity in this genocide, but that was pretty astounding.
[00:41:06]  So these organizations came together in what has come to be known as the Global Sumut Flotilla, and it combines multiple fleets.
[00:41:14]  So, you know, I started out in Barcelona.
[00:41:17]  That's where I did my training.
[00:41:18]  All of us do thorough training and methods of non-violent resistance.
[00:41:23]  And we get caught up in the history of everything from Gandhi to Rosa Parks and onward.
[00:41:29]  And we are sort of, you know, brought together.
[00:41:32]  We do drills where people come in and pretend to be sort of IOF commandos and kick us around.
[00:41:37]  And we practice sort of not reacting and de-escalation, practice of escalation.
[00:41:41]  So from there, one fleet left and from Barcelona.
[00:41:44]  The fleet from Barcelona met up with the so-called Maghreb fleet out of Tunis.
[00:41:48]  It was in Tunis that we suffered the first drone attacks on the flotilla that I'm sure we'll discuss the details about.
[00:41:55]  And then the Maghreb fleet went on to meet the Italian fleets off the coast of Syracuse.
[00:42:00]  And that fleet has now met up just in recent days with the Greek fleet.
[00:42:05]  So it's like a huge, I mean, sometimes, of course, it's terrifying as shit, but there are moments when the sea is placid and you gaze out onto the stars and you see 45 vessels rammed in with hundreds of activists from over 50 countries around the world.
[00:42:23]  And it's a deeply, deeply moving, deeply beautiful action to be a part of.
[00:42:27]  And I think it's important to emphasize that these are truly ordinary people.
[00:42:30]  They're mothers and fathers, nurses and doctors.
[00:42:33]  They're school teachers and people who are really united by a simple moral conviction.
[00:42:37]  And that brings us, of course, to the Israeli line.
[00:42:41]  So you mentioned, Brace, the 2010 attack on the flotilla that resulted in nine immediate deaths by IDF soldiers, and then a 10th that was later, who later died by an injury sustained in the attack on that flotilla.
[00:42:57]  Now, the Israeli, but then you also mentioned these earlier two efforts that your listeners will for sure have seen, you know, Greta on a boat, one boat at a time, the Madeline, then the Handala that Chris Smalls was on.
[00:43:10]  These were single sailing ships that were going there and then having light interceptions from the Israeli army.
[00:43:16]  And the narrative they went with in that instance was these are celebrity cruises, selfie yachts.
[00:43:21]  This is an indulgence for these activists who want to traverse the Mediterranean, taking pictures of themselves.
[00:43:28]  And, you know, there's some, there was some a hint of a whiff of reason in thinking, you know, okay, here are people who are trying to make use of the world attention to really to build a profile.
[00:43:40]  And I'm happy to get into kind of the perils and promise of this kind of very visible direct action.
[00:43:47]  Yeah.
[00:43:48]  But this time, this time, they've made their mind.
[00:43:52]  We are not a celebrity cruise anymore, even though Greta is sailing with us.
[00:43:55]  We are the Hamas flotilla.
[00:43:57]  So we are harboring terror, which is quite funny gazing out now at my shipmates.
[00:44:04]  We are the Hamas flotilla.
[00:44:05]  We're harboring terror.
[00:44:07]  Or we're either useful idiots for the Hamasniks who are actually financing and funding and deploying these ships, or we're in direct communication with these organized terror organizations.
[00:44:20]  And of course, that's very scary on the one side, but it does border on the absurd.
[00:44:26]  You know, of course, as a person of Jewish heritage, winking to Bris, there's a certain irony of it, of course.
[00:44:37]  I will say there's not a ton of Jews here.
[00:44:39]  So we got about one and a half Jews on this flotilla.
[00:44:42]  I'm one and the other half is with me on the boat.
[00:44:45]  But it does serve to kind of create a real contrast with the smear campaign that's been leveled against us, that we're nothing but anti-Semitic, terror-organized enemies of Israel who are out somehow to deliver anything but baby formula basically to Gaza.
[00:45:07]  And it's been interesting to see how that Hasburgh has been kind of received and rejected mostly, because I think people are pretty tired of the Hamas, Hamas, Hamas, Hamas.
[00:45:15]  Like you've covered extensively here on the pod.
[00:45:17]  Yeah, it's interesting because the language that Israel's foreign ministry has been using to describe the flotilla has seemed to be gearing up for violence, or at least to give cover if they do do something to the flotilla.
[00:45:37]  But the reality is, it seems like it started from when parts of the flotilla were in port in Tunisia.
[00:45:46]  I know you sent me and then there was also, I saw online, videos of drone attacks on the boats starting from when they were already in port before they even left.
[00:45:55]  First of all, as a little, you know, I guess, addendum to that question, what aid are you guys carrying?
[00:46:02]  And then B, tell me about some of the attacks that have occurred so far.
[00:46:06]  Yeah, I'm not saying that was in reverse order.

=== Tunisian Reception and Flotilla Attacks (15:39) ===

[00:46:08]  So when we pulled into the port of Tunis, it was actually a very, very beautiful reception.
[00:46:13]  I mean, I think in the United States, the Hasburgh that this is like nothing but a sort of vainglorious exercise of celebrity activism has been more successful than other places.
[00:46:23]  In North Africa and in Europe, I mean, there's been, oof, I don't want to use this phrase, there's been a very warm reception to the flotilla.
[00:46:32]  People saying, you know, what do you need, waiting for us on shores, really celebrating and wanting to be part of this great humanitarian and grassroots effort.
[00:46:41]  And that's been very beautiful.
[00:46:43]  And then remember the first night that we were there, we had a press conference at the Tunisian trade union, general trade union headquarters.
[00:46:52]  And I was having dinner with Francesca Albaneza when, who lives in Tunis, when we got a call from one of the lead organizers in the steering committee who was just like, there's been an explosion, come down to the port.
[00:47:03]  So we ran down to the port.
[00:47:04]  And the crew was still on the boat that became my boat.
[00:47:09]  It's my boat, the family boat, the lead vessel.
[00:47:13]  And yeah, drones had come above the boat and deploy these explosive devices and it just lit up the boat in flames with the crew on board.
[00:47:24]  Luckily, and this is crazy, Brace.
[00:47:25]  I mean, you have to think about, we're in the port of City Busai.
[00:47:29]  For those of you who know Tunis or don't, we're 400 meters from the presidential palace, which is supposed to be the most protected place in all of Tunisia.
[00:47:37]  So this isn't just an attack on some humble humanitarian workers.
[00:47:40]  This is an attack on a sovereign country.
[00:47:42]  Now, mind you, on that very Thursday, you could pick any day that ends in Y, they were also bombing Syria, bombing Lebanon, bombing Doha.
[00:47:51]  Bombing, you know, it was like, they were like, let's go rogue here.
[00:47:55]  But it was crazy because in the first 20 minutes, the Tunisian authorities, without any investigation, blamed us and said, it must have been a cigarette or it must have been a technical failure.
[00:48:04]  And we were like, sorry, here's the CCTV.
[00:48:07]  It's a cigarette.
[00:48:08]  Yeah.
[00:48:09]  So the CCTV came out and still there was kind of caution on the part of the Tunisian government, which was very hesitant to try to raise the diplomatic stakes and confront the state of Israel.
[00:48:19]  But the next night, the very next night, same time around 11.30, 12 p.m., there was another drone attack on the second largest vessel, the Alma, with the same exact pattern with an even more kind of scandalous CCTV drone, explosive device.
[00:48:33]  And it was so funny.
[00:48:34]  I never mentioned this detail, but like in the port of City Busai, you can see, of course, the presidential palace, but on the port, on the kind of mountain above the port is also the U.S. ambassador's house.
[00:48:48]  Oh my God.
[00:48:48]  So some of us were just imagining some guy with just like a little, you know, handheld controller just whipping over these drones and attacking us.
[00:48:55]  But so in the hours that followed the second attack, finally the Tunisian authorities backtracked, said this was premeditated aggression against flotilla, premeditated aggression against the state of Tunisia, and they would be launching some investigation.
[00:49:07]  Now the investigation helps and hurts because we ended up in some really intense bureaucratic nightmare as they went by every boat by boat, flipping over mattresses.
[00:49:17]  basically trying to find a way to accuse us of being the problem instead of trying to engage in a more serious investigation.
[00:49:23]  I mean, I do give huge credit to the Tunisians as the only North African country that would give harbor to these ships and the Maghreb fleet.
[00:49:30]  So I want to be, you know, it's, I'm ambivalent about how those attacks were experienced.
[00:49:36]  But yeah, no, it was in Tunisia that we sort of reinforced the fleet, got more boats, got more people, built up this North African presence.
[00:49:42]  And it's very important to emphasize that presence as well.
[00:49:45]  So geopolitically, I'm sure you guys may disagree with this, but geopolitically, what feels in play right now to me as a political, you know, thinking politically is Europe.
[00:49:57]  Europe is the continent where things are changing the most.
[00:50:00]  We saw these strikes in Italy on behalf of the flotilla that became a large-scale shutting down.
[00:50:04]  The country, you know, the relationship that Israel has with Europe is changing partly because Israel's basically fell into the moral abyss of this genocide because they love NATO and Biden.
[00:50:15]  And so now they're trying to climb their way back out of it.
[00:50:18]  But also partly because it wasn't like, you know, North Africa's always been on the side of Palestine.
[00:50:21]  So what's really in play is Europe.
[00:50:24]  But I say that so as not to downplay the importance of North African participation in this flotilla.
[00:50:30]  You know, you guys will well know that like Israel doesn't allow interactions between Palestinians, especially in their territories and other parts of the Arab world.
[00:50:40]  So the fact that this flotilla, this global summit flotilla has participants from Algeria, from Tunisia, this is already like a very historic thing, but also a very scary thing to the state of Israel.
[00:50:51]  And I think to your question, Brace narrowly, it's part of the reason what provoked this reaction from the state of Israel is, you know, pan-Arab solidarity is really, really scary to them, you know, this, because then they go into their, you know, what was that old tweet about that five, six boyfriend who used to like fuck with tall guys and then be like, oh, me, just little, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:51:12]  I'm just a little guy.
[00:51:13]  No, I mean, that's sort of Israel, Israel does this thing where they sort of both try to project this like strength and the, you know, we're the bulwark.
[00:51:21]  I think this is what Netanyahu was talking about, the UN, like, you know, we're the bulwark for the West sort of standing.
[00:51:26]  When a lion walks into the room, the hyenas flee.
[00:51:29]  Exactly.
[00:51:31]  But then on the other side, you know, you, you get like, you know, Israel is just a little country in a bad neighborhood and, you know, they get beat up on all the time and, you know, they're spit on and harassed and attacked without without recourse.
[00:51:45]  And yeah, it's just it's it's interesting because they sort of play whichever role they need to um for whichever audience.
[00:51:51]  I want to go back to something that you just mentioned, which is that Tunisia was the only country that would, one of the only countries that would give you port.
[00:51:57]  Can you explain to our listeners a little bit the kind of geopolitical tension between countries like uh participating, giving you port, not giving you port, what that actually means and how that kind of works for this entire mission?
[00:52:13]  Yeah, I mean, we could go country by country, Liz, because there's so many countries participating and there's so many different relationships that they maintain to Israel.
[00:52:20]  So, for example, we had direct, how do I make this seem legal?
[00:52:26]  We had very high level support from the government of Malaysia.
[00:52:29]  Like when the Malaysian delegates left from Kuala Lumpur to join the Global Summit Flotilla, there was a big ceremony that involved the prime minister.
[00:52:36]  You know what I mean?
[00:52:37]  Like they had really high level support.
[00:52:39]  And it's not a coincidence that we started in Spain, which has also been a very protagonistic actor in the European context for trying to lead on this.
[00:52:49]  Who am I, a Jewish kid from California, to call a lot of these Arab states kind of comprador leadership?
[00:52:57]  But, you know, Egypt's, you know, we saw this in the Global March to Gaza.
[00:53:03]  Obviously, Libya is now deeply intertwined with Europe through these sort of migration politics and the Italian.
[00:53:14]  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:53:15]  Externalization schemes, I guess we might call them.
[00:53:18]  Similarly with Morocco.
[00:53:19]  I mean, these are countries that are that are, you know, we saw this in like the World Cup, like that have mass, mass expressions of solidarity with Palestine that come from their people, but very cautious, if not actively complicit regimes.
[00:53:34]  Jordan being the most insane of them.
[00:53:36]  Jordan is Palestine.
[00:53:37]  It's not a real country.
[00:53:39]  But the solidarity movement there has been heavily repressed by the monarchy.
[00:53:47]  And UAE also similarly playing this confusing and ambivalent role.
[00:53:51]  On the one hand, they're basically making huge large-scale contracts with Israeli defense firms.
[00:53:57]  I remember one scheme, they're like digitizing Jordanian government software using an Israeli subcontractor.
[00:54:03]  I mean, these kinds of things that make your head spin at this particular juncture.
[00:54:08]  And Tunisia really was the only place that would give harbor to the fleet.
[00:54:14]  But I want to be clear that this is a very, very dynamic situation.
[00:54:17]  So let's go back to the Hamas Flotilla propaganda.
[00:54:21]  I'm very, like, this has been one of the most intense and difficult political challenges that I've faced, you know, that I've dealt with in my short political, I don't know, operational life, because it's so, so dynamic.
[00:54:38]  So with the Hamas propaganda, we really mobilized into action.
[00:54:41]  In the beginning, we really didn't want to go like, you know, the humans of the flotilla and try to go overly humanistic and because that seemed like a huge distraction.
[00:54:50]  But all of a sudden, we had to change gears and we had to really play up the fact that the composition of this flotilla are ordinary citizens.
[00:54:57]  As I said, they're coming from all walks of life.
[00:54:58]  So many of them paying the last cents of their savings accounts to be part of this mission.
[00:55:02]  That it is fundamentally a grassroots, organized, financed, and mobilized initiative.
[00:55:08]  And we succeeded.
[00:55:09]  We succeeded to get 16 countries, among them Spain, Slovenia, Ireland, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, to sign a statement that not only recognized this mission as being a humanitarian mission, slapping Israel's propaganda right in the face, but also declared certain legal protections.
[00:55:25]  And then the social mobilizations continued.
[00:55:27]  Then we saw this brokia motuto, 37 cities blocking ports and highways and train stations across Italy that forced Georgia Maloney Sand to send this frigate.
[00:55:38]  I'll get into a bit later why it's such a problematic geopolitical maneuver, but at least we can say for sure that it was the social mobilizations that forced her hand to do so.
[00:55:47]  And then a few days ago, or even more days from when this will come out, we saw the Spanish announce their own naval support to be deployed from Cartagena to back us up.
[00:55:58]  So it's super dynamic.
[00:56:00]  And so we've moved past the phase, I think, of where we can really be tarred and smeared as Hamas next.
[00:56:07]  No one's really buying that.
[00:56:09]  And now we're in this very weird phase where the Italians with the Cypriots, the Israelis are trying to get us to mediate and negotiate to drop off our aid and entrust it to the Israelis to then deliver it over to Gaza.
[00:56:23]  And we're like, fuck no, why would we, like, that's entirely not the point.
[00:56:28]  Neither because we don't trust you to deliver the aid, nor because it obscures our primary mission, which is to open this, establish this humanitarian corridor.
[00:56:35]  And in that sense, in the dynamic sense, we're ramping up the pressure.
[00:56:39]  At first, it was protect our flotilla, protect our safety, because we're super vulnerable out here in the Mediterranean, suffering multiple drone strikes, not just in Tunis, but outside Greek territorial waters, where there was like a swarm of drones that came in the middle of the night, jammed our communication channels with ABBA, wink-wink at Greda Thunberg, and like trying to destroy a lot of the bows of the sailing ships in particular.
[00:57:02]  But so we've gotten the states involved now.
[00:57:04]  And now our goal is to say, don't just kind of run up the rear.
[00:57:07]  Don't just protect our lives because we're not the story.
[00:57:09]  The corridor is the point.
[00:57:11]  Sail alongside us.
[00:57:13]  You know, this siege is immaterial.
[00:57:15]  It's not protected under international law, quite the opposite.
[00:57:18]  It's illegal under international law.
[00:57:19]  So it should be the state's responsibility to join us.
[00:57:22]  We're happy to be the tip of the spear and go and break the siege ourselves.
[00:57:26]  But we want these ships to go alongside us with the scale of humanitarian aid that Gaza deserves.
[00:57:32]  Here I'm recognizing Brace, the utterly insufficient quantity of rice and medicine and baby formula that we're actually carrying on these boats.
[00:57:45]  But these large boats that I'm now seeing on the horizon, I mean, they're huge naval frigates, like warships.
[00:57:51]  And they could just pack their shit with supplies and they could just sail to Gaza.
[00:57:59]  And so now we're in this, now we're in this very fog of flotilla moment where the Israelis are like, well, the Spanish are coming, but guess what, bitches?
[00:58:09]  We control all the software on your ship.
[00:58:13]  And then, you know, it's just this, I'm laughing and it's not funny, but it's like we're very few hours away.
[00:58:21]  I know we suspect that tonight could be another drone attack because we're about to get, we think we're going to get pincered into Cypriot waters where the mission could totally fall apart if the Cypriots get control of the flotilla.
[00:58:30]  And I'm ranting here.
[00:58:31]  But that's kind of some of the high drama and the like deep geopolitics of the mission so far.
[00:58:38]  So this occurred, there was some other incident with Cypriot waters, if I'm remembering right, prior to this where a ship trying to get to Gaza mysteriously broke down in Cypriot waters and then was sort of refused rescue for quite a while.
[00:58:55]  So yeah, I think it is probably a sort of crucial moment in the journey.
[00:59:01]  I had a question too about the further drone attacks that you guys experienced.
[00:59:05]  I think, what was it, last week?
[00:59:08]  Three nights ago, yeah.
[00:59:09]  Three nights ago.
[00:59:09]  So from recording.
[00:59:11]  Last week from, yeah, from by the time this comes out.
[00:59:15]  That was sort of extraordinary evening where there seemed to be a multi-pronged or at least like a huge number of drones deployed against the flotilla.
[00:59:27]  What happened there?
[00:59:28]  It was crazy.
[00:59:29]  I mean, I was trying to get some sleep.
[00:59:32]  Obviously, sleep on these boats is not an easy thing to do.
[00:59:35]  So if I'm sounding out of my mind, it's because of that, I like to think.
[00:59:42]  But, you know, the alarms went off.
[00:59:45]  We came aboard, grabbed, you know, entered into the security protocols, so life jackets on.
[00:59:51]  And basically for three hours, there was just one after the other, these loud explosions that were, you know, kind of quadricopter drones.
[01:00:02]  It's the dead of night.
[01:00:03]  Okay.
[01:00:03]  So let me try to explain.
[01:00:05]  So every night that we're on these boats, we have drone watch, right?
[01:00:08]  Which means that for two, three, four hours, we're on shifts checking for drones.
[01:00:13]  And there's three major types of drones that we see, sometimes every night, sometimes alternating.
[01:00:18]  We see large scale, I don't know what to call them, like Reaper style, like huge surveillance drones that are high in the sky that go overhead.
[01:00:26]  And you can just watch them and wave to them.
[01:00:29]  Then there's smaller drones are kind of in the distance, but not close enough to attack.
[01:00:35]  And you can see them.
[01:00:35]  They're always positioned kind of around the flotilla regularly, and you're just paying attention to whether they're coming close.
[01:00:41]  Part of what we're trying to avoid is what more practiced flotilla participants call drone fatigue, where they can just engage in this kind of psychological warfare where they wear you down, you're running drills.
[01:00:51]  If you find it too easy, if you're just constantly waking up and getting on deck, like they know that they can just fuck with you basically.
[01:00:57]  And then there's a third type of drone, which is these that often come off these motherships where they deploy these quadricopters that come onto the ship.
[01:01:04]  Like you can hear the like this is the droning of the drone.
[01:01:09]  And they deploy these devices onto the ships.
[01:01:11]  So in that particular instance, they came with a huge swarm of these drones.
[01:01:17]  There were no fewer than 14 attacks that ranged from, you know, explosive devices that were aimed at the bows of the sea, of the sea, of the sailing ships, rather, trying to like basically render them inoperable.
[01:01:30]  And others had chemicals deployed onto them.
[01:01:33]  Obviously, like, I really need to emphasize this, we're not like naval experts.
[01:01:38]  So when there's just chemicals on a ship, it's like, what's that?
[01:01:42]  It's like, we don't know how to, we don't have a lab on board to check what it is.

=== Drones and Chemicals Deployed (12:11) ===

[01:01:47]  And it just was for hours.
[01:01:48]  It was really, really terrifying, kept us up all night and led us to basically have to regroup the next day, repair some of the damaged ships.
[01:01:57]  One ship was damaged beyond repair and had to drop out of the mission.
[01:02:00]  And then it had us kind of cruise into make a really difficult political decision about getting close to Greek territorial waters on the border of Greek territorial waters and then try to have to communicate with the Greek authorities to see if it would be too dangerous for us to try to gain some protection from Greek authorities by being inside the territorial waters.
[01:02:25]  But as you mentioned, like the flotilla has historically been sabotaged primarily by bureaucratic means, stuck in Turkey, deflagged.
[01:02:36]  So we're in this very vulnerable place where we're trying to thread a needle.
[01:02:40]  It's quite a big needle, I should say, on the Mediterranean.
[01:02:43]  We're trying to get our way through international waters to reach Gaza without being pincered either by the naval ships or by drones or by other forms of attacks.
[01:02:53]  Boats could come in the night and try to sort of maneuver us away from this, as they did with the Handala, to try to get us into territorial waters where we can be handled more efficiently by, for example, the Egyptians or the Cypriots or the Israelis themselves.
[01:03:06]  So we've been sort of like talking around this, but I kind of want to make it explicit for our listeners, because this isn't from the Israeli side, this is not just about stopping the delivery of humanitarian aid, right?
[01:03:18]  Like that is not why they are sending, it's ostensibly part of why they're sending all the drones, right?
[01:03:24]  and all of the other sorts of ways that they are trying to, through all the propaganda and through the media, the ways that they are trying to discredit or stop the flotilla from reaching Gaza.
[01:03:35]  But you mentioned that there's these larger geopolitical implications here.
[01:03:41]  And I kind of want to make explicit to our listeners, like the stakes and why Israel is really going all out to stop a fleet of, like you say, ordinary citizens just trying to bring baby formula to the coast.
[01:03:58]  So from the beginning, the goal of this flotilla is to be a kind of lightning rod for mobilizations on land.
[01:04:06]  It may be difficult to feel this and see this in the United States, the most atomized, demoralized, and individualized country in the world.
[01:04:15]  But in other parts of the world, especially in Europe, as I mentioned, like the mobilizations are becoming huge, untenable, politically untenable.
[01:04:22]  A lot of world leaders, as we saw at the UN that you mentioned, Brace, are seeing the writing on the wall.
[01:04:27]  And I'm not an optimistic guy.
[01:04:29]  Normally, I'm a quite fatalistic one.
[01:04:30]  Not great in this instance, as we approach a deathifying encounter with the Israeli authorities.
[01:04:36]  But my point is I'm generally pessimistic about these political prospects, especially after two years of total inaction, which has forced our hands on this flotilla.
[01:04:46]  But as far as I can tell, something is really changing.
[01:04:48]  I mean, when Ursula von der Leyen, who projected the Israeli flag onto the European Commission on October 8th, starts to say we're suspending the Israel-EU agreement, we're imposing sanctions.
[01:04:58]  I mean, people are beginning to recognize that if they're not on the right side of history now, they'll be remembered forever about having been on the wrong side of it, save for a few sealess celebs in the San Fernando Valley.
[01:05:12]  But so something is changing.
[01:05:14]  And the goal of this flotilla has been to basically drive, build pressure and drive forward by bringing so many nationalities together and representing those countries, build the pressure to sustain those mobilizations on land.
[01:05:31]  Without that, we're just a small fleet of vessels that is just wandering its way through the Mediterranean.
[01:05:37]  But to your point, Liz, that's kind of like the original framing and goal.
[01:05:42]  And it's working.
[01:05:43]  I mean, it's really exciting to see how this action is drawing attention to the, once again, to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which after the murder of Charlie Kirk and the deployment to Portland is dragging the New York Times front page away from this genocide back to domestic matters, both important and unimportant.
[01:06:04]  But to your point, Liz, a precondition for Palestinian liberation, a basic precondition, is like territorial integrity and some degree of sovereignty and self-determination.
[01:06:16]  The fact that Gaza has no control of any of its borders, the fact that it has this long land, this long shoreline that is basically patrolled by snipers who kill children, like just having a swim, a basic precondition is breaking this blockade.
[01:06:38]  And so I might be high on my own supply here, but if we can amp up this pressure, I mean, by the time this goes out, I'm going to be in prison.
[01:06:45]  So I don't, we'll see if my hypothesis turns out to be true or false in the end.
[01:06:53]  But if we can draw these states and draw the people of the world to kind of denormalize that siege, Israel keeps claiming this is a legal naval blockade.
[01:07:02]  Like, what are you talking about?
[01:07:04]  This is as, you know, it's as legal as the U.S. blockade of Cuba.
[01:07:08]  It's just a might makes right type of thing that basically prevents Gazans from having any say over their exchange, over their relationship to the world.
[01:07:18]  And so part of the collapse of apartheid regimes is having the institution, you know, is sort of people waking up to the institutions that they once thought were durable and permanent collapse overnight.
[01:07:33]  And one of those institutions is this siege, is this illegal blockade that basically has Israel very lightly patrolling the sea around Gaza, but having no one ever test that, no one ever having the strength, the courage, the force, or the pressure to break free the Gazan shoreline.
[01:07:53]  So that's really menacing to Israel because so much of their kind of rogue state behavior is built like a house of cards where you start to pull one thing and you realize that it's all kind of illegal.
[01:08:07]  It's all kind of immaterial.
[01:08:08]  It's all kind of dependent on everyone.
[01:08:13]  It's kind of a Wizard of Oz country.
[01:08:16]  And I think we saw that with Netanyahu at the UN.
[01:08:20]  It's up to us to decide whether we want to start scraping away the layers of lies and disregard for international law and start to get to the kind of core of this nation state project, which is fundamentally illegal if we're going to kind of rescue international law from ruin.
[01:08:40]  I don't think I've ever mixed metaphors as uncomfortably as I've just done.
[01:08:45]  I know what you're saying because as you know, Liz and I went to that Petro speech the other night and I was talking to a lawyer I know who was there, a friend of the show, Jake Rom, and I was asking if I was like, well, you know, Petro's idea, which got him in a little bit of trouble, of having a multinational sort of volunteer force go to Gaza or go to Israel, but specifically in Gaza, I was like, well, I don't legally know what that means.
[01:09:12]  Like, could you just do that?
[01:09:13]  Because Gaza is technically not part of Israel.
[01:09:16]  It's part of obviously their military operations, but those are the legality of those is obviously, let's say, highly questionable.
[01:09:26]  You know, I don't think there actually is any international law that really says that you can't do it.
[01:09:33]  But I think that is obviously something that sort of has functions as a through line since the beginning of, especially since October 7th, but obviously in many of Israel's actions 1948.
[01:09:46]  But, you know, as far as I can tell, and again, I'm sort of a legal novice, and especially when it comes to international law, or rather, IHL or just international law in general, I don't think that they can blockade Gaza.
[01:10:00]  And I think that you technically should be able to get through there.
[01:10:04]  However, obviously, as we've alluded to a few times during this episode, the Israel Foreign Ministry is basically directly accusing you on the flotilla of being part of Hamas, whether, again, like you said, useful idiots or directly a part of Hamas.
[01:10:21]  It doesn't really matter.
[01:10:22]  The distinction is kind of worthless because they'll just choose whichever suits them most when they actually decide to fully act with full strength.
[01:10:31]  Not to freak you out, but I think there's a sort of a higher than 0% chance that something violent could occur.
[01:10:38]  Obviously, this has happened 15 years ago in this brutal raid.
[01:10:43]  Well, thank you.
[01:10:44]  Thank you for that very inspiring non-teasing.
[01:10:48]  We all know what we signed up for, and we're all prepared for multiple scenarios.
[01:10:51]  And we're all running drills for lights, violent interception.
[01:10:55]  We're all running drills for drones.
[01:10:57]  And we know what this means.
[01:10:58]  I mean, Israel, it will be interesting because this episode will come out when this has already transpired, should nothing else crazy happen in the next 24 hours.
[01:11:07]  And frankly, at the level of which we're talking, and I do want to mention what happened yesterday because true and on listeners will love that little bit of insider knowledge.
[01:11:18]  But Israel has stated its plan for what it wants to do with this flotilla.
[01:11:25]  The plan is as follows: if Israel is to be believed, they are going to build a floating prison in international waters.
[01:11:33]  They're going to stop us.
[01:11:35]  They're going to unload all the members of this flotilla, as they say, doing everything they can, in quotes, to protect our lives, subject to any potential whiff of threat against theirs.
[01:11:48]  Put us on the floating prison, either sink our ships or tow them to become a new patrol police force around Gaza, sort of turning our humanitarian mission into another weapon against the Gazan people.
[01:12:02]  And then put us into processing in Israel.
[01:12:08]  And, you know, I think it's an interesting time to be a U.S. American.
[01:12:12]  Normally we think of our, and I had a choice.
[01:12:14]  I have other nationalities because my family was Holocausted and so they moved around and I have three passports, but I chose to go under my US American passport because I think it's really important that we try to elevate pressure.
[01:12:24]  You know, right now we've got five senators who are supporting us and Monday we're supposed to come out with maybe 10 US members of Congress, but no one really cares.
[01:12:32]  The US government for sure would prefer we just rot.
[01:12:34]  Oh, absolutely.
[01:12:35]  And so every country is going to get their diplomatic envoys to help them if we do go to land.
[01:12:39]  It's so funny.
[01:12:40]  And I'm just thinking like, what Mike Huckabee is going to come and like give us moral support as we go to prison.
[01:12:46]  Anyway, unthinkable.
[01:12:48]  But if they're to be believed, then they're going to be processing.
[01:12:51]  They say, if there's any resistance, not defined what that means.
[01:12:55]  It could mean a sneeze.
[01:12:56]  It could mean a middle finger.
[01:12:58]  It could mean an established or hypothetical connection to what they understand to be organized or whatever it is.
[01:13:05]  If there's any resistance, then you risk very long-term imprisonment in Israel.
[01:13:11]  And I'm very afraid, less so for my global northern compatriots and much more for the Arab world delegates who I do think are seriously risking long-term imprisonment in Israel as a result of that.
[01:13:26]  So that's their plan.
[01:13:27]  Anything can happen.
[01:13:28]  I'm not discarding an extremely violent interception with fatalities or at least casualties.
[01:13:34]  I think that any of those scenarios are on the table, but we're trying to pay very close attention to what Israel Qat says, what the Israel Foreign Ministry says about their plans for us.
[01:13:43]  I think we've won battle, if not the war, in terms of trying to get past this idea of us being a Hamas slotilla.
[01:13:52]  And I think that we've all been doing our, playing our role to try to humanize, explain that we are just normal people who come from all over.

=== Lots of Strange Things (06:51) ===

[01:13:58]  That, you know, on my new boat, we've got some U.S. veterans of conscience here, very interesting, who are very serious about our security.
[01:14:07]  But yeah, maybe that's segue Liz and Brace to tell you about what happened here.
[01:14:13]  I'd shift on my vote.
[01:14:15]  Yeah, what happened to the family ship?
[01:14:17]  Because this is the, or the boat.
[01:14:19]  This is the one that you were on for most of it.
[01:14:21]  It's the largest boat in the flotilla.
[01:14:23]  And, you know, I got an interesting WhatsApp message from you yesterday saying it had been taken out of action.
[01:14:29]  So how did that happen?
[01:14:32]  It's interesting timing.
[01:14:34]  It's very, it's very suspicious.
[01:14:36]  And of course, nothing, we take nothing for granted on this mission.
[01:14:39]  Of course, anything could happen, you know, like logistically or mechanically, but we had a beautiful, humble motor cruiser that was humming along like a charm, carrying myself and some MPs and the coordination committee, the so-called steering committee of the broader global Sumut flotilla.
[01:14:57]  And, You know, overnight, we wake up in the morning and that engine has gone kaput and all the oil has.
[01:15:05]  Somehow, gallons and gallons of oil that were sustaining the engine have come leaked out and some parts were stripped, and someone who I will not name for fear of defamation, was somehow missing from the boat, and some investigative work was done on said individual, and pretty much all that led me to to a certain conviction that there, this was an act of sabotage.
[01:15:28]  Sorry, sorry, I have to interrupt.
[01:15:29]  They were missing from the boat.
[01:15:31]  Yeah, they had by the time the motor was gone, they had already departed from our boat, our other boat, and then off the mission.
[01:15:38]  This is the same person who had been on two prior boats with motor failure.
[01:15:41]  I shouldn't even really be saying this, but it's just too good for the True Anon audience.
[01:15:45]  Like, obviously, we fucked up with certain security protocols and there's a degree of faith that is invested in anyone who's taken this pledge and put their lives in the hands of these organizers to do this deeply scary and beautiful thing.
[01:16:05]  But too many strange things happening in too perfect of a sequence.
[01:16:11]  And that has led me to believe that this was in fact an act of sabotage.
[01:16:17]  I don't want me saying this on air, but I can't help myself because I'm pretty pissed off about it.
[01:16:23]  And but I think, you know, but I think if you take a long step back from this race, it's like, duh, like, of course.
[01:16:31]  Of course, with unprecedented initiative of this scale, like, of course, they would have find ways to fuck with us out externally and internally.
[01:16:41]  I mean, why wouldn't they?
[01:16:43]  You know, Liz, someud.
[01:16:45]  Samud in the global sumud flotilla means steadfastness.
[01:16:48]  So we're trying to be steadfast and resilient in the face of so many setbacks.
[01:16:54]  But yesterday was really difficult as we tried to redistribute as many people as possible onto other boats, stuff them into sailboats and try to keep the mission going.
[01:17:05]  I mean, but really, really suspicious stuff, like how this motor just suddenly gone kaput after two previous motors that this individual had been stationed on and how he hopped on like a third more important boat.
[01:17:20]  Anyway, lots of, lots of, lots of strange things, lots of conspiracy theories that could flourish in the, in the fumes of this flotilla.
[01:17:29]  What does that do to you like psychologically?
[01:17:31]  I mean, you mentioned the kind of like how the drone stuff getting to you, this stuff getting to you.
[01:17:36]  I don't mean in like a mental health way, but just in terms of like staying kind of focused and not trying to get ahead of yourself because like you kind of laid out for us, the stakes for this, For all of you guys on this convoy are like very real in a way that is difficult to, I think, for people at home to kind of imagine.
[01:18:03]  You know totally yeah, I think we have.
[01:18:05]  I mean, there's a kind of a, there's a kind of a psychological protocol that like sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, which is just, you know, remember the suffering of Gazans like, try to have perspective about what we're doing here and try to remember that nothing that has happened to us, you know, compares in any way to what's happened to the people of Palestine.
[01:18:25]  Having said that Liz, it's really like it's.
[01:18:28]  You know, morale is tested every hour by the sleeplessness, by the psychological warfare, by the drones by, by all of it.
[01:18:36]  It just fries nerves and, and yesterday we had lots of people step off the mission as a result of this.
[01:18:42]  I mean, we're still going, like the boats are, you know, i'm speaking to you from, you know, from from international waters.
[01:18:51]  I can see lots of beautiful boats around us and we're brought together still and we're trying to keep morale high um, but boy, do you realize that sleep is really a precondition for like um, for doing any of this stuff?
[01:19:03]  And and uh, and they've been really successful with these acts of sabotage and bureaucratic warfare and psychological warfare, at trying to sort of keep us kind of dragged into like internal um bullshit as opposed to really staying focused on on the task ahead.
[01:19:22]  And one of my jobs, coming from the progressive international and with some degree of experience and kind of global coordination, is to try to think about a diplomatic strategy, for this is trying to think about how we play this cat and mouse game where we drag the states in and how we escalate with them.
[01:19:35]  And part of the problem is that when we're so bogged down into fixing things and getting on new boats and managing protocols and running drills and responding to alarms and dealing with drones, is it really it?
[01:19:49]  It it limits our ability to do what should be like really highly coordinated political work, because there are so many people who have solidarity with Palestine and we need to take that political resource and try to use it not to our protection, but to the broader mission,
[01:20:05]  which I think is epicentral, which is, like we said, it's just to collapse this like, oh my God, another metaphor is coming, like this, you know, this false, this sort of sand castle of a siege, you know, it's to try to push past that and try to remind the world that the threats are real from Israel, but that doesn't mean that they can't be confronted and overcome.
[01:20:32]  And, you know, I think it's always, it always behoves us to look at the history of the South African apartheid movement and how it took time and it took steadfastness, it took sumud, but that a lot of the things that felt eternal, you know, began to kind of collapse under the weight of their own contradictions, under the weight of international pressure.

=== Petro's Concern: Gaza's Future (08:14) ===

[01:20:50]  And I'm not saying that we're at that moment, but I do feel like that this mission is really, for me personally, you know, and I think for so many people, about refusing to let our friends and allies and comrades and colleagues sit in this well of despair and desolation that comes after two years of scrolling through images of slaughter on their cell phones and just to say, like, no, like we're going to keep fighting this thing.
[01:21:14]  We're not going, as Petro says, to let Gaza die because if Gaza dies, all of humanity died.
[01:21:20]  I mean, I'm sure in that speech, he said some other crazy psychedelic shit, but he totally did.
[01:21:26]  But anyway, but back to your point about this army, like it sounds crazy and people are sort of giving him either flowers or calling him crazy for making this call, which I believe was already echoed by the Indonesians at the UN.
[01:21:38]  Yeah, he mentioned, yeah.
[01:21:42]  It's like, yeah, we like, it just, I just, you know, we have to remember.
[01:21:46]  I mean, remember when all these like Western countries, like France and Britain, I think it was the US too, like flew planes over and they dropped humanitarian aid over Gaza that like killed children.
[01:22:00]  Yes.
[01:22:00]  Like a giant pallets out of it with the parachutes.
[01:22:03]  Yes.
[01:22:03]  Like we had that.
[01:22:04]  Then we spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a floating pier.
[01:22:09]  Fucking pier, man.
[01:22:11]  Never forget the pier.
[01:22:12]  Yeah.
[01:22:13]  No, but that was that.
[01:22:16]  But never forget the most that to me is peak Biden foreign politics.
[01:22:20]  Yes.
[01:22:20]  But putting that away, like the pier, the pier is actually a really important precedent for us because what the peer showed is that, you know, the Gazan shore is negotiable.
[01:22:29]  Like it's not, it's not like this is, you know, they haven't built an apartheid wall of cement on the Gazan shore.
[01:22:37]  Like it's, it's a zone of conflict and negotiation, and we should think about it that way.
[01:22:44]  You know, in Rafa, they've got like 30 meter high like barbed wire.
[01:22:49]  It's very difficult to talk about that.
[01:22:50]  But like we're talking about a terrain, a nautical terrain.
[01:22:54]  Can you say that?
[01:22:55]  Talk it.
[01:22:56]  Yes.
[01:22:56]  Yeah, you can.
[01:22:57]  Where, yeah.
[01:22:59]  And, you know, we're not, I'm not trying to be Napoleonic about this, but like we do want to create more conflict by denormalizing this idea that just like this line in the water that Israel has drawn is somehow legitimate, is somehow theirs to patrol and manage and restrict access, especially of critical aid that can go to Gaza.
[01:23:21]  And we're running against the clock here because the places in Gaza that we were trying to reach are being destroyed as we speak.
[01:23:27]  I mean, it's not a coincidence that, you know, that they're targeting precisely the kind of the sort of beach side infrastructure that would have otherwise received our flotilla.
[01:23:38]  So we're trying to race against time.
[01:23:39]  We're trying to sort of transcend the multi-dimensional challenges that we're facing.
[01:23:47]  We're trying to get there both as quickly as possible, but as with as much sort of attention and support and solidarity as we can to make the most of what has already been a month-long mission that has definitely cost me some gray hair and some lives on the back of it.
[01:24:01]  God, yeah, I guess it has been a month.
[01:24:03]  I think I saw you the night before you left for this.
[01:24:05]  Yeah.
[01:24:05]  Oh my God.
[01:24:06]  I don't know what I'm talking about.
[01:24:07]  But, you know, before we wrap up, I just want to mention, you know, I was thinking about this the other night.
[01:24:13]  How many this war in particular has involved ships in so many ways?
[01:24:20]  And, you know, the mask off mayor's campaign, but also all the various flotillas, you know, the fucking stupid pier.
[01:24:28]  Like, it is interesting that like all the demonstrations at ports.
[01:24:33]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:24:34]  The Genoan dock workers, et cetera, et cetera.
[01:24:36]  And now there's, you know, I don't know if you read about this.
[01:24:40]  There's that, you know, call for all of these various European dock worker unions to sort of have a some kind of conference on what action to take with Gaza.
[01:24:48]  And, you know, this is something that if anybody involved in, I guess I would say, serious politics understands, is that there are these certain choke points with docks being one of them are very important in shipping in general.
[01:25:01]  And also, of course, the Houthis with their sort of ad hoc blockade there too.
[01:25:08]  Yeah, I think.
[01:25:09]  And this has been a, I mean, this has been a chief, this has been a main camp, one of the campaigns that we've run out of the Progressive International for a couple of years, which is no harbor for genocide.
[01:25:17]  So we have a team of investigators that was first uncovering just the scale that we didn't really know about, the scale of arms shipments that were passing through places like Al Gecidas in the south of Spain.
[01:25:29]  And so we got Spain to finally have to respond to this.
[01:25:31]  And now Spain has imposed its arms embargo, not refusing passage for arms through Al Gecidas.
[01:25:38]  We did a similar thing with passage in Italy, as well as in Tangiers and in Tunis, in all these places across the Mediterranean.
[01:25:47]  I mean, on the one hand, it's been a very long journey from Barcelona.
[01:25:52]  On the other hand, I think it's so important.
[01:25:54]  And Brace, you'll know this.
[01:25:57]  I'm sure you guys have covered this a lot.
[01:25:59]  The Mediterranean is already a graveyard.
[01:26:03]  We're sailing over the cadavers of thousands, thousands of migrants who have been drift back and push back and left to die on the Mediterranean.
[01:26:14]  And it's the sea that connects North Africa and the European Union.
[01:26:19]  And it's in these horrible links of complicity about the externalization of Europe's borders.
[01:26:25]  But there are also links that connect the Greeks with the Israelis and Eastern Mediterranean oil exploration and extraction with horrific environmental results.
[01:26:37]  And of course, it's the same sea that, as I mentioned, is gazed onto by the hundreds of thousands of Gazans that remain alive and continue to look out onto the world from this seashore.
[01:26:47]  So there's something really powerful about this flotilla uniting those forces, the trade unionists and the social movements and the political parties and the peoples of this Mediterranean region in this action,
[01:27:06]  because as you say, it's become such, you know, in PYM's work on the Massakoff Maresk campaign, where we've been very successful in trying to push Maresk and its affiliates to try to rethink their relationship to Israel.
[01:27:20]  I've learned so much already, even before I got into this boat, like learned so much about these shipping logistics as being kind of the sinews of, what is it, sinews of trade and war.
[01:27:34]  I mean, sinews of this genocide, you know, the things that we, and we have the power to cut those cords, as Liz, you were saying.
[01:27:43]  So I think that we've got to switch back into a more agentic mode as people who are concerned about humanity or concerned about Gaza.
[01:27:51]  I just think that, you know, obviously, like, I'm here against the wishes of my dear family and friends who did not want me to go on this, but, you know, I'm here as a Jewish person to say, of course, like, fuck you, you're not going to rob us and pervert our heritage and culture and traditions.
[01:28:13]  And here's a U.S. American that really wants to emphasize to our compatriots that we just don't have to resign ourselves to a Zionist organized government, we might say.
[01:28:26]  And to the peoples of the world, let's keep fighting this thing.
[01:28:33]  So who knows what's going to happen in the next two days?
[01:28:37]  I suspect that many things will happen, even before we get to what Israel considers to be its red line, about 150 nautical miles away from Gaza's shores.
[01:28:48]  I hope that your listeners will think about, so it sounds so stupid, but speaking up and speaking out and following the journey and maybe contributing, going to patreon.com and giving some money to the pod.

=== Speaking Up and Out (02:40) ===

[01:29:04]  And the pod considers making a donation to some of the medical workers, the true heroes of this, the humanitarians who are in Gaza, actually doing this work day to day.
[01:29:12]  But I look forward to my time in prison.
[01:29:16]  And I think that many of the U.S. Americans on board with me are also looking forward to some good time in an Israeli dungeon.
[01:29:25]  And I think we're all prepared for what we signed up for.
[01:29:27]  So we'll see what comes our way.
[01:29:29]  And perhaps we can do another recording from Inside Jail if they give us internet.
[01:29:35]  You got to use your one phone call on me.
[01:29:39]  Oh my God, the idea of calling Brains from Braining my one phone call.
[01:29:42]  I know some lawyers.
[01:29:43]  All right.
[01:29:43]  All right.
[01:29:44]  Maybe I'll put you as my emergency contact.
[01:29:45]  I get two of them.
[01:29:46]  Just put Liz and Brains as Mad Mercury.
[01:29:49]  Brace screens his calls, just so you know.
[01:29:52]  Okay.
[01:29:53]  Well, David, thank you so much for joining us.
[01:29:55]  This went on a little longer than I thought because, you know, frankly, there was just so much to goddamn talk about.
[01:30:00]  I wish you good luck, my brother.
[01:30:02]  Yeah.
[01:30:02]  Thank you so much.
[01:30:04]  I hope to see you guys on the other side very soon.
[01:30:06]  And thank you so much for having me.
[01:30:17]  And, you know, I met David at the premiere of the worst movie I've ever been to in my entire life.
[01:30:23]  You don't need to say what it is.
[01:30:24]  I'm not going to say what it is.
[01:30:27]  I was going to say it's not what you think, but I think it could be what a lot of people think.
[01:30:30]  It could be what people think.
[01:30:31]  Depending, it's in the zeitgeist.
[01:30:33]  It was a nasty movie.
[01:30:34]  I got to say that was a bad movie.
[01:30:37]  It sounded like Trump.
[01:30:39]  Well, I would like to hear, I would be curious to hear his take on it.
[01:30:42]  Oh, my God.
[01:30:42]  Imagine if Trump had a letterbox.
[01:30:44]  That's the only social media he should have.
[01:30:46]  Yeah.
[01:30:47]  I know.
[01:30:47]  Well, in a perfect way.
[01:30:48]  I looked at letterbox for the first time today.
[01:30:50]  It's not for people like us.
[01:30:52]  Yeah, I did feel a little aged out.
[01:30:54]  It's a little, it's, I think it's Tumblr for movies.
[01:30:56]  I also don't like, I don't love a mobile first site.
[01:30:59]  Yeah.
[01:31:00]  I don't love a mobile first.
[01:31:02]  I prefer the old school charm of the desktop.
[01:31:05]  Here's the deal.
[01:31:06]  I'll watch it myself or I won't.
[01:31:08]  I don't need to hear your opinion on it.
[01:31:10]  You're just some other guy.
[01:31:12]  Anyways, it was a pleasure to have David on the show.
[01:31:16]  And I'm Brace.
[01:31:18]  I'm Liz.
[01:31:19]  We are, of course, joined by Producer Young Chomsky.
[01:31:22]  And this has been Truan.
[01:31:23]  We'll see you next time.
[01:31:25]  Bye-bye.
[01:31:44]  Come out.