Behind the Bastards Presents: Hood Politics with Prop

Here are a couple of our favorite episodes of Hood Politics with Prop podcast series. The DOJ Curbed Google So Hard No, the Other Zionism Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hood-politics-with-prop/id1493858530 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2jGGL8bVmvnErrqZabvXGs iHeart https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-hood-politics-with-prop-81527703/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

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• 0:35Robert Evans?

  Picture this: You're listening to the Sniffy's Cruising Confessions podcast, and suddenly, wait, what did they just say? Well, the questions raised in those show-stopping moments will be answered in the all-new bonus series, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions: Bedside Manor. Hosts Gabe and Chris will dive deep on a specific topic covered in that week's Tuesday episode, from sexual health and HIV prevention to finding the right doctor. Listen to this special bonus series, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions: Bedside Manor, now on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get podcasts. Sponsored by Healthy Sexual from Gilead Sciences.

• 1:08Speaker 03

  Call Zone Media.

• 1:09Robert Evans?

  Robert Evans here. It's the start of a new year. We are continuing. We may have a rerun going this week, but we've continued throughout the holiday season to keep a normal schedule of Behind the Bastards out. But we're also running compilation episodes. End of the year started this one to kind of highlight other shows on our network. And right now, we've got a best of several episodes of Prop's wonderful show, Hood Politics, edited together so that you get a few less ads than normal. One is on how the DOJ curbed Google, and the other is on the other Zionism. So, check out Prop's show now, and then next week, everything will be completely back to normal, although it's not even missing, you know, episodes of Behind the Bastards they've kept running.

• 1:54Robert Evans?

  It is our sworn sacred oath to continue putting out episodes of that show from now until the heat death of the universe. So, thank you for continuing to listen.

• 2:04Speaker 01

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• 2:48Speaker 01

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• 3:13Robert Evans?

  You love the Sniffy's Cruising Confessions podcast, but you've got questions. Don't worry, everybody does. To answer them, hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson-Rosso just dropped a new bonus series, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions: Bedside Manor. For all your burning questions, the guys turn to the experts, including Dr. Dmitri Daskalakis, an infectious disease doctor, public health honcho, and big time advocate in LGBTQ+ health, HIV prevention, and health equity. Think of it as the after show to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, where the crew dives deep into topics and stories from that week's Tuesday episode. Episodes cover topics including testing and why are they swabbing there? Finding a doctor who's not so judgy? And so much more.

• 3:58Robert Evans?

  It's all about busting sexual health myths and helping listeners better understand the topics they may want to explore with their own doctors. Listen to this special bonus series, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions: Bedside Manor, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get podcasts. Sponsored by Healthy Sexual From Gilead Sciences.

• 4:15Speaker 04

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• 4:47Speaker 05

  Hey, do y'all still say curved or curbed? Like if somebody curbed you? I don't even know if it's, I don't even know if it's curve or curved. But essentially what we mean is, and maybe I'm an old head. What we mean is when you approach a young lady and she shuts you down, like, oh, man, you got curved. You know, they just, I'm pretty sure it's curved. Probably like curb your enthusiasm. It's probably it. I don't know if there's anything more painful. Because most of the time for you to get curved, it's usually because you are enthusiastic. A lot of times it's when you're super confident in the move you're finna make. Now, I can't speak for every young man who finally hits his awakening

• 5:31Speaker 05

  of the sex that he's attracted to. And I know mine, when I was like, wait a minute, I like girls. When you have to start building up the bravery to actually admit it, or maybe ask this girl to dance, or sit by her, or maybe even possibly get a little kiss on the cheek, you know? Just, you know, we was little boys. You're not really ready for like full intercourse because we're still children. I remember like rehearsing and I have a sister that's six years older than me. So I could ask her, like, how do I say this? What, you know, what outfit should I wear? Like, you know, and she was like down to make her little brother like, you know, she want her little brother to be fly.

• 6:16Speaker 05

  So I could ask her and come up with lines and like, how, how do I approach? What do I say? Where do I stand? Like, how do I? I'm nervous, I'm scared, all for her to, all for this little girl to giggle and run to her friends and go, "Eh, eh, he not even fine." Just destroy, it took me three weeks to get the courage to say something to her, just for this girl to be like, "Eh." Like, that's the child.

• 6:47Speaker 05

  Which, I don't know if it's everybody's story, but you have to understand, like, me who, I went to schools in neighborhoods that were so diverse, where there was just as many Filipino and Latino and, you know, Chinese. There was such as, there was so many other communities that were at the spaces I was in. Like, again, I read the demographics, most of y'all are from Cali that listen to this, uh, from the San Gabriel Valley. Well, I was born in South Central, like I say it all the time, but I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley. And then I went to high school in the Inland Empire. And like, so I, you experience so many cultures, you're exposed to so many types of girls, where black dude is just not they type.

• 7:32Speaker 05

  This is way too long of an intro. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is it really hurts to get curbed, especially when you're really confident. And guess what? Google got curbed! Hub Politics, y'all!

• 7:56Speaker 05

  Alright, before I go into it, but look it like this.

• 8:07Speaker 05

  Look it's like this. But look it like this. Alright, well,

• 8:15Speaker 05

  the darkest of holidays has hit. It is the one-year anniversary of the

• 8:26Speaker 05

  attack from Hamas on Israel.

• 8:31Speaker 05

  Which, in retaliation to such attack, unleashed the kraken towards all of Gaza and extending Palestinian areas.

• 8:48Speaker 05

  Way too many people died.

• 8:55Speaker 05

  There was a memorial held in Israel where they played that last song before at that, you know, because the attack happened, like, one of the parts happened during a music festival. And the last song that was being played before the attack happened and hostages were taken and people were killed. They played that song to mark, you know, the one year anniversary of a horrible, horrible situation. And from the Israeli perspective, the city is torn because you can't argue that that wasn't, you know, one of the, or maybe if not the greatest terrorist attack that they've experienced.

• 9:39Speaker 05

  And I think, like, I'm not adding snark to this because it's like, I mean, like, I'm just trying to be real about it.

• 9:49Speaker 05

  I think, how do I say this?

• 9:55Speaker 05

  Since they've been, in their mind, the little engine that could the whole time and everybody was against them, they felt like their only way to be safe is to be the aggressor. And they've continued to be the aggressor because they feel like everybody's being aggressive to them. So there's a kinship to the idea that America has of itself too, you know, where we say if you go into war, you're going overseas. Like, the attack is over there. Everybody's trying to come to get us, but don't nobody want to mess with us because they know we'll play around. It only happened once and that was in Pearl Harbor. We blew up whole islands after that. So they're, they carry in their psyche that type of sort of same vibe.

• 10:37Speaker 05

  But that is not to diminish the

• 10:43Speaker 05

  atrocities that they feel in their heart and the things that had happened. So you mark it, right? On the other hand,

• 10:54Speaker 05

  It also marks the beginning of the absolute decimation of Gaza. With 11,000

• 11:05Speaker 05

  people dead and just a completely untenable living situation that has now spread. Everybody's fear has spread to Lebanon and Yemen. So, and now big dog Iran has jumped in. It was what everybody that works in peacemaking was hoping wouldn't happen. That like we would get to a ceasefire, a two-state solution, which clearly is the only option. Like I just don't understand how anybody could think any other way that like this is really the only option. But with that being said, all the blood, all the carnage, all the like, let's make this happen. Gaza could not have a sort of

• 11:49Speaker 05

  moment to even breathe to mark the anniversary of this because it's leveled. You know what I mean? There's like where, you know? They still running for cover and Israel not even letting, they barely letting aid in.

• 12:06Speaker 05

  Like we gotta fight to let aid in.

• 12:11Speaker 05

  And then with all the carnage and it becoming into a regional war. There's a ceasefire deal on the table and Netanyahu won't accept it. And you still ain't got the hostages, all that blood and you still ain't got the hostages. So Israel as a nation is torn because they're like fam, uh, can we keep our eyes on the prize here? I just, we just want our loved ones back. What is you? I ain't ask you to blow the whole like.

• 12:46Speaker 05

  I ain't ask you to blow the whole city up. We just want our hostages, but what is you?

• 12:52Speaker 05

  And then there's the other half that's like, no, we can't let them people live.

• 12:58Speaker 05

  And then there's the really, really small sect of hyper-conservative religious folk within the Israeli world that are like, "Well, this is how we bring the Messiah.

• 13:12Speaker 05

  We gotta control this region, or the Messiah ain't coming."

• 13:16Speaker 05

  So, like, no, they gotta go.

• 13:20Speaker 05

  So, there's all that going on, all in one place.

• 13:24Speaker 05

  The JV team had their debate.

• 13:28Speaker 05

  Switching gears here. The "my dad can beat up your dad" debate. Because who really cared what the vice president think? Because the vice president don't really do nothing. Now, that being said,

• 13:43Speaker 05

  it was more substantive than any of us would have thought. And it's one of those things where it's like, be careful what you ask for. Y'all asked for civility and substance. What you didn't ask for

• 13:55Speaker 05

  was truth, my nigga.

• 14:01Speaker 05

  The Trump ticket is getting its money's worth. He is... J.D. Vance understood the assignment. The assignment was to sanitize everything that Trump stand for. And even to the point of like, almost like the opposite, where it's like, "Nah, we ain't say that." And then, when the mic slipped up and said, "Well, you weren't supposed to lie." Fact-checked us.

• 14:28Speaker 05

  You revealed your cards, big dog. But J.D. Vance absolutely 100% understood the assignment. And you cannot take that from him. He was slick. He was likeable.

• 14:42Speaker 05

  And he didn't go on the full attack. They did the whole, "I agree with what we're supposed to be doing." And he took all this schmarm. Now, don't get me wrong. I personally like... dudes like that repulse me, that are too polished. And every, like, that... I'm like, "You're clearly hiding something."

• 15:04Speaker 05

  Anyway. Everything was going great. Until this man could not answer the January 6th question. Now, did Trump lose the election question? Now, the thing is, that's in some senses, it's a gotcha question because we all know that man can't answer that question. Like, what y'all expect this man to say? Yeah, nah, Trump tripping on that one, but we gonna win this one though. He can't say, oh, Lord. He can't do that. Y'all know he can't do that.

• 15:37Speaker 05

  That man can't get up there and tell the truth.

• 15:42Speaker 05

  Like on Boondocks, you better learn how to lie like me. You can't be telling the truth to these people. You gotta lie. That'd be the end of his job. Did Trump lose the 2020 election? Like, nigga, duh. Like, he can't say that. He gotta be like, look, dude, we're looking forward.

• 16:02Speaker 05

  But didn't y'all? And then proceeded to talk backwards. Boy, I tell you, man, I love it here.

• 16:10Speaker 05

  All right. Let's get back to it.

• 16:19Speaker 05

  All right. So last year, we did an episode that was called Get Your Weight Up. And I taught y'all about antitrust and monopolies and the situation Google was facing. And it was over search engines and ads. Showing how this is just a brand new world where what Google is facing, especially when it comes to like search engines. You had soup being brought to them by like, you know, Bing and like Ask Jeeves that was like, you're creating a monopoly. I could even giggle with the idea of like Bing because it's like, bro, no one uses Bing. Google's a verb. Like, it's a company, but it's also a verb. You Google something, they're like, you're a monopoly.

• 17:01Speaker 05

  They're like, listen, I'm not, like, Bing is not my competition. Microsoft ain't my competition. Full chat, GPT is. TikTok, Amazon. I am not. Meeting with you other browsers and search engines, y'all lame, y'all need to get y'all weight up. And the argument was in this antitrust case, which I will back up and explain the term monopoly and antitrust, and then give you a context. So their argument was, you say we're cornering the market, we're making it impossible, but y'all could just get y'all weight up. I don't know why you mad at us for making a superior product. Now, the last time you Googled something, I'm pretty sure you got frustrated because Google's trying to do the AI thing, again, to keep up with ChatGPT.

• 17:45Speaker 05

  And so the searches have been, I've had to like retype in what I'm looking for multiple times, because I'm like, this used to be super easy. So in my anecdotal opinion, it's gotten worse as they've tried to bring in AI. But the point is, the case was, do you have a monopoly on search and ads? And when we talked about it at first, it was being brought to the Department of Justice. Well, they have decided, yes, you have a monopoly, it's not fair, and you need to break it up, break it up, break it up, break it up, break it up, break it up, break it up, break it up. Yeah, y'all ratchet, y'all know that, so y'all gotta break up your company. Now, the reason why this was so big, obviously because Google's big,

• 18:30Speaker 05

  but it's because it harkens back to one that happened in 1998, Microsoft. So here's what we gonna do. I'mma explain to you what a monopoly is, and if you've ever sold drugs, you already know. Which means that we have to talk about capitalism and the version of capitalism that America says they love and believe in. How you protect that imaginary version of capitalism? Why an antitrust is what it is, and why the government steps in? What happened with Microsoft? And how that informed this Google decision? And then what Google gonna have to do, alright?

• 19:13Speaker 05

  But I swear to you, just like the very foundational truth, the axiom of truth that this show is, you already know this stuff. Alright, next.

• 19:47Speaker 05

  Okay, so capitalism. Oftentimes, we have, because we live in the world we live in, we have conflated the idea of capitalism with just economics. That if you sell something, it's capitalism. You have to remember capitalism as a concept was invented. Now, the idea of trading some sort of commerce for goods and services is as old as puka shells, is as old as when we moved from just bartering to, yeah, there is currency and the currency, and I'm giving you this currency, and you're going to return back to me a good and service.

• 20:32Speaker 05

  The institution that we talk about that includes a supply chain where the product is being created in multiple different factories that's being cobbled together into one piece. The system that says each of these people that work in these factories is industrial revolution type situation that puts like, if you're going to take a pencil, the eraser tip is made somewhere else. But that place is really only getting raw materials from another place. And those raw materials are being sent there. And then the people carrying that stuff in the transfer, people that transfer it in the truck is a whole other company who brings this raw materials to this place.

• 21:15Speaker 05

  And then that place has to buy the equipment from a whole other company who makes the equipment for you to process this thing to make the eraser tip. But still, if you're the pencil company, you have a contract with them, with a wood company, who's got a contract with a timber company, who's got a contract with a lead company or a graphite company. You just the people that put it all together. And then it's a whole other marketing team that just was hired by the brand name of the pencil. To put it all in one place and then you gotta hire a Shopify, right? A 3PL and all of these people have employees and the price of that pencil is cobbled together

• 21:59Speaker 05

  in the way that makes sure or supposed to make sure that everybody, every company that was involved in this, all gotta pay their employees. Bring that all together, get it on the shelf and then they charge you a dollar ninety-nine per pencil. Now, if you're making one million pencils, it may not have cost you, the company, they selling it for a dollar ninety-nine, it cost the company, I don't know, hopefully if they doing it right, two cents. So the cost of the pencil, you hear all them companies all had to make their money. But if you make enough of them, you can lower the cost that it takes to make the pencil. So that when it gets to the consumer, you only paying two dollars.

• 22:41Speaker 05

  And that two dollars, you know, multiplied by a hundred thousand consumers, is supposed to be able to make sure that everybody's happy and everybody wins. Now, the capitalism that we exist in is to say, okay, best product at the best price wins. So if somebody got a better pencil and they only charging a dollar fifty, the idea is, damn, you made it cheaper and better, so everybody's gonna buy that. So then, what do you do? You have to figure out how to make your pencil better and cheaper. Hopefully you could charge a dollar twenty-five, right? All the way down to where, get this, the term of elasticity, to where the product is cheap enough to make to where everybody makes money.

• 23:26Speaker 05

  There's a, there's a number. Now you have to enter the concept of branding, okay? I work, I'm a brand ambassador for a company called Mir, right? Y'all know the people that make my mugs and, and the poragami's, all the coffee stuff is this company called Mir. Now Mir got a lot of clients too. And Mir was telling us, telling me about one of their clients for which I will not name names. And because I ain't trying to worry, I ain't trying to mess up my money. This company is able to sell things at an absurd price point. But we looking at it, but my man Amir was looking at it was like, okay, you're sourcing, there's no way in the world you're sourcing at a different place than everybody else is sourcing. You're sourcing at the same place. And he was like, and the owner or the buyer was like, yeah, yeah, source at the same places as our competition.

• 24:11Speaker 05

  They charge 3.99, we charge 8.99. It's called branding. So just the power of the branding, the fact that your name is on it. Let me give you all a little game about Kirkland and Costco brand. Now Costco ain't paying me for this, but I wish they was. The Kirkland brand liquor, the tequila, the whiskey, all that that they got in there. It's, they bought a recipe from, I believe it's Eagle Rare, like Makers Mart. I believe their whiskey is Makers Mart. They just bought a recipe from them and just white labeled it. It's actually very, it's very good whiskey. It's just named Kirkland. Brilliant. So if you smart, rather than buying the label name, you getting the same product. It's just cheaper. So now you take, when you talk about a national economy,

• 24:56Speaker 05

  you take all the pieces that we talking about. If we're talking about, again, capitalism, you take every person that is on all them jobs, how much money they make, how much money is coming into the company, how much money that company is spending, how much money that the people that work at that company are spending, right? The products for which they buy, how much them products cost to make? And how much profit those products produce? How much of that money is going out to other countries? How much of that money is coming back into the consumers pockets? Because once the company makes money, the people that work at that company all get paid

• 25:39Speaker 05

  and then they buy other products, which brings the money back. So you take the totality of all that, the combination of all those factors, all trying to get you to spend your dollar with them. Them competing with each other is called free market capitalism. All of that is capitalism. And what's capitalism's goal is, if you haven't figured this out yet, the greatest amount of profit for the least amount of cost. Now, how do you pull that off? If that is the goal of capitalism, will you cut costs? Where do you cut costs? Most of the time, your highest cost is your employees. It's payroll. That's your highest cost. So you, you pay your workers at least as possible.

• 26:23Speaker 05

  Why did America become super superstar? Super superpower so early? Well, they didn't pay their workers at all. It was called slavery. You was only paying for the raw materials. You only had to pay for the land. You had to pay for the workers. Of course, you gonna get rich. By no stretch of the imagination is the goal of capitalism itself, human flourishing. Now, that might be the person that functions within the system. You might want to approach this in a way that centers humanity to, in the sense that like you're paying your workers well, you're ethically sourcing. So that means you're setting a price point that allows for you to pay workers well, to treat the environment well. You have things like certified B Corps.

• 27:06Speaker 05

  At some point, I'll bring my homie Brian on here to talk about what it means to be an ethical capitalistic company, which some would argue is impossible. I might agree with you, but again, like I say all the time, you know, she might as well swim, be as truthful as possible. Like I said, we're all on a big corporation. This is I heart media. Like, let's not be delusional. You know what I'm saying?

• 27:29Speaker 05

  Corporation, guys. So we're not delusional, but there's a way to be as ethical as you possibly can. But that's not the goal of capitalism. That might be the goal of the person. There might be a advancement of a society to where.

• 27:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, multiple people now have jobs now, which means like the way of life is just better across the board for everybody because now everybody's employed. But one would argue that like we weren't starving before we had jobs. Like it before there was a factory, before you bought your food at a grocery store, you just grew your own. Every for most of human history, people just had like small gardens, like where you just, and you just traded back and forth to where it's like, okay, we grow squash well, I'mma walk across the street, go visit another family over there in that other village. I know they grow spinach well, you know what I'm saying? I'm bringing them some squash, they bring me some spinach. It's fine.

• 28:26Speaker 05

  Like we all, we, we were all right before we had to like work for like cotton pieces of dead men to turn in for our waters to work in our houses. Because somebody bought the lake and owns the clouds. I don't know if you noticed, you can own the, the clouds. You can own the land rights and all of the sky and atmosphere above it because capitalism is crazy right now. Anyway, I haven't even talked about antitrust yet. This is absurd. So, all that to say, in our system, at least in America, we tried to set up this situation to say that if we keep this institution pure enough, it will police itself. And how you do that?

• 29:11Speaker 05

  Because people really make their decisions by their purchases. People buy what they want. And if you charge too much, but your brand is trash and we don't believe you, people won't stop buying it. That's a price elasticity. What's the highest you could charge before people gonna be like, all right, you done lost your mind, this brand ain't worth it? Which is how you gain the system, you know what I'm saying? It's like you make your brand worth it, but you, you charge as high as you can, not as cheap as you can. You take somebody like Arizona IC, they charge as little as they can. That's their brand though. For them it worked, but anyway, we, we as in the royal we, not me. But the concept is you need to have competition in the market. You can't just be the only person selling a thing.

• 29:56Speaker 05

  You can't, you can defeat your competitors by having a better product at a better price point, but you can't just box them out because when you box them out, when you're the only option, there is no reason for you to not price gouge and the quality of your product doesn't have to be great because you the only people. That's what I mean by drug dealing. You trying to be the only connect. If you the only connect, you charging people whatever you want. They hooked on the product. You could step on your product if you want to because what they gonna do? Where you gonna go? I'm your only option. I used to feel like that with gas prices because I'm like, what am I gonna do? There's no difference to me

• 30:37Speaker 05

  between mobile and ARCO. I still have to go to the thing or I don't go anywhere. Like I, I, now as a side note, I went to Rhyme Fest this past weekend at the Coliseum and I took the train and I was like, no native, nobody I know takes trains because they just don't go enough places. But this time, it was like, I didn't have to switch once. And I was like, bro, why don't, every time I take the train, every time I take the metro here in LA, I'll be like, why don't I do this? So, yeah, maybe there is an alternative. Anyway. So being mad over gas prices, I'm like, what you gonna not go fill up your tank? What you gonna, you gonna not go to work? Like, I felt so hopeless. I was like, this

• 31:18Speaker 05

  is a monopoly. You monopolize. So the idea was in, in the anti-trust law, I don't know why they call it that, they just do. Anti-trust law is saying, we do not believe in the American economic system that it is legal or even in the spirit of who we are as a nation, that any one company should have a, have a monopoly over a business. There needs to be competition, meaning there needs to be other companies that are pushing you because what that does for the consumer is it means we're getting the best products because y'all are fighting

• 32:00Speaker 05

  against each other for our dollars. They're not concerned with just one company's success. We talking overall success of the entire country because they looking at it again as the economy, as capitalism, capital C, not just, are you doing alright? We mean the whole country. So, the whole country gotta win, which means that. I don't really care if your one, your one company is doing alright. We need the whole thing to work in theory. Because you could go get the off-brand stuff. You grew up like us, oh man, there was Cheerios and then there was Malt-O-Mil. There was Tasty-O's. You feel me? I was like, them is nasty. I used to get so mad when my mom brought that off-brand cereal. I wanted the name brand cereal.

• 32:42Speaker 05

  It was cheaper, but it, but that ain't like, that ain't work now. What that meant was that made Cheerios. Because my mom sometimes was like, I ain't buying the Cheerios, they cost too much. So that means that Cheerios, because there's such thing as Malt-O-Mil and Tasty-O's, Fruit Rings, not Fruit Loops. Because those things existed, that meant that like, yo, Cheerios gotta work harder to make sure that they products stay bomb. And at the price point is something that we willing to pay. That's why there's a hundred different car companies. Why they fighting for our attention? Why everybody racing to get an electric car? Like, thing with Teslas, they was just there first. Well, actually Saturn was there first. You should see a documentary called Who Killed The Electric Car?

• 33:26Speaker 05

  Anyway, but they not the only ones. They couldn't, they couldn't get to electric cars, shut the door. There's companies like Rivian, who I, they trucks are amazing. You know, but there's, there's other companies. There are other people making electric cars. And so it's like, yo, get your weight up. Like, do something great. Now, it could become a monopoly if they do this. They take all the road mapping that they've done with their self-driving, get it perfect and then make sure every new electric car has to buy their software for the road mapping of self-driving. Like if every new electric car had Tesla's software in there from, for their like self-driving cars, which right now would be a disaster.

• 34:11Speaker 05

  But if they continue to develop what they got and then they box out everybody else, it wouldn't matter if it's a disaster or not because every car comes equipped with their software. That would be a monopoly. To which they could argue, I mean, you're welcome to uninstall it and put your own one in there.

• 34:31Speaker 05

  You go, do you know how to uninstall software on your car?

• 34:36Speaker 05

  Are you going to Google it? Think about the dial-up modem sounds, your AIM username. We all got sidekicks. No, I don't even know if we got sidekicks. It was in pagers there, you know what I'm saying? You about to have a sidekick.

• 34:57Speaker 05

  Boy, the early internet was feels like caveman energy. So, Microsoft, led by Bill Gates, was young, scrappy, startup. You know, you gotta remember, like, at this point, Macintosh, those was just the computers in the school lab. Like, when you went to the computer lab at school, there was these funny-looking things that we just had to learn when we did our typing classes. You know, you just did it on that. So, Microsoft at the time was developing Windows, right? So, Windows 90, you know, Windows 95, and that's, which was the operating system, which you guys know already. And then, Microsoft Office.

• 35:41Speaker 05

  So, spreadsheet, you know, PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, and everything that comes, just Microsoft, it's like, just Microsoft, it's Windows, like, it's Microsoft. What they started doing, because Bill Gates ain't dumb, is he was taking over while, while, while Apple and them was working towards school and fun and stuff like that. Microsoft was taking over the corporate world. And every company, every, you know, work computer was a Windows and Microsoft Office. And then, eventually, once we hit Windows 95, you know, that whole, like, you know, the, the, the, the, the Apple, like, you know, sessions where they launch new products? Like, Windows invented that.

• 36:26Speaker 05

  Like, that was Microsoft. Like, it was just goofy. Even the, the, the user video, the training video for how to use Microsoft Office in Windows 95 had, believe it or not, actors from Friends from the show Friends was on it. Jay Leno did the the monologue like like it was the biggest thing in the world because it was just change. You gotta remember this is where tech was. And what else that they did that was amazing was if you bought a laptop, you gotta remember there was a million different types of laptops. You remember HP, you remember Acer, you could get any type of, just like before the iPod, there was Zunes, like there was a million different other products and then somebody takes over and just wins the thing.

• 37:10Speaker 05

  What Microsoft did was they cut a deal with PC and laptop companies and was like, yo, so let us be your default operating system. So if anybody wants to use another operating system and OS like a Macintosh, you gotta take all that stuff off and put a new one in. Now, Macintosh was smart enough to say, no, our operating system works on our products only, but set that to aside right now. Microsoft was like, cool, y'all could have your own little weird egg shaped computers. We'll take over every other computer on earth. And that's kind of what they did. They just cut a deal and they was just like, yeah, dude, like, yo, if you're selling a laptop, you're selling a desktop, it's got Microsoft operating

• 37:54Speaker 05

  system already installed. So we already got a deal. So we ain't even got to sell it to the consumers. It's already sold to the manufacturer. Kind of brilliant. I mean, why wouldn't you do that? Now, while this is happening, something else was being invented. A little old thing called the World Wide Web.

• 38:14Speaker 05

  The internet was being made around this time. Talk about that next.

• 38:45Speaker 05

  Okay, so now that the internet's being made, you know, you gotta buy your modems. What nobody thought about, because you have to remember, nobody knew what the internet was, is you have to have a way to get on there. Browser, no, you need a browser. It's so stupid, like, it's so stupid I have to point that out, right? And because there was no separate apps for your emails or for... There was no apps. The apps were Microsoft. You need a browser to get on the internet. The browser, there was a lot of different types. Navigator, there was Netscape. And at the time, that's all that Netscape made. They were the only browsers.

• 39:30Speaker 05

  I mean, it was fine, like, what else did we know? You got on the internet with, on a Netscape browser. Bought your little AOL disk, which we're gonna talk about in a second. Bought your little AOL disk, popped it in, you clicked the disk, and then it would throw to Netscape. Like, you just, that was the only, that's how you opened the internet, was the browser. Of course, now, we, you know, we got Chrome, Firefox, Safari, like, we got those things. But you gotta remember, like, we didn't, none of those things, we didn't know what those things meant. Like, none of those things existed. Netscape was how you got to the internet. Bill Gates ain't stupid. He was like, yo, this the future. We need a, hold up, we need a browser. And his browser was called Internet Explorer. That's how you got on the internet.

• 40:13Speaker 05

  His browser was trash, right? Because they was too busy making too many different things. They was making laptops, they was making Office, they was making Windows, they was making all these different things. They didn't really make browsers. But he's not stupid. He knew that this was the future. So, the browser got better and better and better, and then he realized, like, wait a minute, I have a million vendors I work with. Every laptop already has my product in it. Stupid, why don't I bundle Internet Explorer with it? As a matter of fact, I'll throw an Internet Explorer free. It just comes with, it comes with Microsoft, it comes with Windows. Windows is already on every laptop. I'll just, it's so stupid, like, duh, I don't even have to sell it. I'm already, nobody, can you name another word processing?

• 40:58Speaker 05

  What's the Mac one, Numbers? Adobe Pages? I'm saying even now, we don't use it. Maybe you write in Google Docs, which we're gonna get to later. But nobody writes it like it's, it's you use Word almost two decades, right? Like you, what else is there? So they were like, duh, let's just add our product. Let's just add Explorer to every laptop. Obviously Netscape's like, well, wait a damn minute, bro. Are you serious? So you're just gonna sell the product for free? Well, like, I mean, there's nothing, well, I mean, what, you're already on every laptop? Like, this is, they were like, you're breaking antitrust laws.

• 41:41Speaker 05

  So they wrote a letter to the Department of Justice like, yo fam, I can't like, can't nobody compete with this. This ain't right, 200 page letter. Justice Department was like, huh, you might be on to something. Because like, you're like, this is what seems to us like, this is anti-competition. Like you just boxed everybody out. Like you just gave everybody the product for free. You gave everybody the weight free. Somebody come in your hood and just passing out weed for free. It's like, well, how can I run a business? Like, I don't understand, like, if, if every car come through your neighborhood has already got a vape in it, like, well, I mean, what I'm supposed to do? Why you think the gas company so mad? Or why you think these oil companies so mad about electric cars?

• 42:24Speaker 05

  Cause it's like, oh, nigga, I don't need you no more. Like, wait a minute. This is leading us to obsolescence. But there, but, but what specifically about an antitrust is, or this monopoly is like, this is the same product. And you guys are like, this is David and Goliath out this mug. Like you already, like, there's no, I can't compete with this. This is like, there's, there is no competition. I don't want to get into the like, operating system business. Like we make an internet browser and you're just giving yours away for free. And, and even if people don't want it, aha, which is where we get what has to do with Google. Even if people don't want it, it just comes with the lap. So of course, like, just the psychology of it is like, well, this the one that come with it. So like, why would I go out of my way unless I'm a tech geek? Why would I go out of my way?

• 43:09Speaker 05

  It's just it come with it. We don't know enough about the internet to have a preference about it. We don't know about incognito, like that stuff don't exist no more or yet. So what difference does it make? All right, let's Internet Explorer. And it made sense to us because it was like, or to the, it made sense to the consumer because it's like was made from the same company that when I opened the laptop, that's how it runs. They was like, yo, this is unjust, like this ain't, they can do whatever they want. They're, and I remember, I remember the browser was trash, like it wasn't, it wasn't that good of a browser, like it just, like, what do you? I don't know what I can, I mean, and they had no incentive on making it better per se because they done already sold the product completely. They done already made their money off, off Windows and off Office.

• 43:54Speaker 05

  So there's no like, you've cornered the market. There's no, there's, there's, you, no one can compete with you. So they brought that case to the Department of Justice, Netscape did. So Netscape brings, brings, brings a case to Department of Justice. They was like, just like I just explained, like, yo, this is a monopoly, dog. Like, there's nothing we can do about it. Like, I mean, what are we gonna do? It's already on your laptop. I bet you, you open your, you get a new computer today, bet you it's already there. Like, how do I compete with that? Like, that's not, what am I supposed to do? They bring in Microsoft to be like, okay, well, and this is like legendary. Like, so Bill Gates and him and Microsoft come in and Microsoft was just like, okay, that's funny. Wait, what? Wait, are y'all serious? Hold up, this, there's no way in the world you're serious right now.

• 44:39Speaker 05

  What is you, what you saying is absolutely ridiculous. Let me get this straight. Wait, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Let me get this straight. We made a product. We made smart business moves. We used our connections. We developed a new product. We took our own product, bundled it with our other own product and use the connections that we took years to develop. And you saying that's a problem? What you mean? What, like, what, what is the problem? You can't possibly be, or you, so we're smart? You punishing me for being, what are you talking about? You're saying this is anti-capitalist? I don't understand. So should our product suck? We not try, what do you, you want us to not make money? What are you talking about?

• 45:24Speaker 05

  This is absurd. Fuck you mean? We made a product that we hustled. I don't understand. Tell them fools to get their weight up. Ain't nothing stopping you from finding a computer. You could, you could approach them with the same contract we approached them with. Get your weight up. I don't understand. We approached these people, we approached these manufacturers. They could have said no. They said yes. What do you want me to do? You want me to tell the consumers, don't buy our product? What are you talking about? Absolutely ridiculous. Was Microsoft's argument. The problem was they just walked in super smug and super arrogant. And they were just like, I'm saying like, we smarter than everyone. It was our fault, we're smarter than everybody else. Department of Justice ain't like that. They ain't like your little attitude.

• 46:09Speaker 05

  They asked him very, very direct questions like, yo, do you remember this email? They pulling up emails where them fools was talking. This is the first time that was like a part of like, because remember emails just now were born. Pulling up emails where they were like knife the baby. Like talking about like, really, we're trying to kill Netscape. Like that's our goal. Like, we're actually trying to get like just cutthroat, like Silicon Valley, like OG, like no, we're actually trying to kill, kill it. They was like, yo, you remember this email? He was like, no. Like, you don't remember the one you just replied to? He's like, no, I don't remember it. He was just a jerk about it. Like, they were like, hey, uh, did you have any concern about any other companies? He was like, what? I don't understand the question. And I was like, what? What don't you understand? He's like, what do you mean by concern? I don't know what you mean by that.

• 46:54Speaker 05

  And they were like, do you know what concern means? Like, I know what it means, I don't know what you mean by that. It was like, sir, do you, okay. Um, just this like smug, I'm smarter than you. I'm 10 steps ahead of you, just, it just turned everybody out. But they're, uh, they're ultimately, their point was, okay, dude, you can't punish us because their product sucks. Like, that can't be, that can't possibly be our fault. We're good at business. This is what happened. Department of Justice was like, no, that's a monopoly. Y'all gotta break this company up.

• 47:30Speaker 05

  Because the straw that broke the camel back was pairing Office and Windows with Explorer. That's the part that did it. Because it's like you've made, now nobody has any other option. That's the same example I was giving with Tesla. Cause the point is, on general principle, consumers are supposed to have options. And the argument is, having options keeps everybody in check. Right? Because if you have options, that's gonna force you to make the better product. And if you baking a better product, that make all of America look good. Consumers are happy, money's flowing. Right? That's the argument. And again, using a Tesla as an example, like I just said right now, didn't I just say that?

• 48:13Speaker 05

  I'm sorry, I'm just talking. If every electric car in the future, if you want to do self-driving mode, you have to use this because it's the default setting. And this gives Tesla no incentive to like, they could charge every car company whatever they want, because who else you gonna go to? Which means that that is gonna raise the prices for all of our cars, which means it's gonna raise the prices for chips and all this good stuff. It's just like, there's no, like, this doesn't help nobody. This just makes you by yourself rich and all of us gotta suffer by it. So that's, that's the theory. Nobody's happy with that except for y'all. And we just decided as a nation back in the 1700s that we wasn't gonna be like that. In theory.

• 48:58Speaker 05

  Now, what they told them that they had to do was break the company up. You have to put Windows in one place as one company, and Office as another company. Is that how you understand Microsoft? Of course not, because that didn't happen. Essentially, what they did was just, they paid the fines, they did what they had to do, and then they just promised to not be jerks. It's just really, really ain't nothing happened. So ultimately, nothing changed. Netscape ended up selling to AOL. Microsoft just had this ruling stand that they were operating as a monopoly.

• 49:41Speaker 05

  But since God is good and just... When last time you opened an Internet Explorer browser? Now, this is what the Department of Justice was considering when they looked at this Google case.

• 50:24Speaker 05

  Now, let's talk about specifically the ruling. Now, remember, Google, the company's called Alphabet, for whatever reason. The ruling was that they illegally monopolized the search engine market. Now, and here's how they did it. Now, they did it the same way Microsoft did it, in the sense that you just, if you're a software company, duh, make deals with hardware companies. So, what Google did was like, I don't care if you're using Chrome, even if you use Safari, whatever phone you got, when you open it, make a deal with us where you automatically, your search engine goes to Google.

• 51:05Speaker 05

  When the last time you said, "I'm gonna Bing something, I'm gonna ask Jeeves something." No, you Google it. So, they made deals with phone makers and other hardware folk to be like, "Look, just let us be your default browser." Now, you all know, you could go into your phone, you could go into your settings and say like, "I want this other thing to be the default." But who's gonna do that? Some people do. Like, some of y'all folks who just are like anti-iPhone, because you believe in freedom, you wanna Android, which is just another company. Like, I don't understand how y'all don't understand that. But your belief is, you wanna be able to customize it in the way that you wanna customize it, because Apple tell you what to do.

• 51:49Speaker 05

  And one of them things that Apple tell you to do is like, it's automatically gonna go to Google. Now, with that being automatically your search engine, and them... Gathering a trillion, kajillion, mega, kajillion, flubly, flubly, flillion megabits of information on us, they can sell ad spaces. So if you are a person like me who make they live in online, I mean, you have to, you have to use the Google market, you have to use their ad spaces. You have to do search engine optimization. You have to be able to show up in their ad revenue space because that's where everybody at. Why in the hell would you buy an ad at Bing?

• 52:35Speaker 05

  What is that gonna do for you? And it's, and since they the only people in town, they the only people that it really makes sense to spend your money on, they could charge you whatever they want. Let me tell you why Terraform cold brew wasn't on Amazon. Because I would lose $2 per can. Like, I would be paying them. Like, there's no, but at the same time, Terraform cold brew out of money. If you went to the website, there ain't no coffee there because I'm out of money. You understand what I'm saying? Like, they make it where, I mean, what are your other options? That's, that phrase, like, what's my other option? That is a monopoly. Now, what Google argued was the same thing that Microsoft argued, which was like, fam,

• 53:19Speaker 05

  I'm sorry for being good at my business, but people can do whatever they want. We just happen to try to give people an offer they can't refuse. Now, what was interesting this time was the Supreme Court brought up not just X's and O's, it wasn't just business and like nerdery around the law, they brought up psychology. And it's this concept called the psychology of the default. No, no, no, let me say it right. The power of default. Now, you and I, I don't even have to explain that. You understand when something's just your default setting. You just, after a while, because something just becomes so normal, you don't even think

• 54:03Speaker 05

  about that there are other alternatives. Like, you'd have to Go out of your way to do that. That's the default. And what they were arguing is that is proof of a monopoly in our brains. Google's a verb despite the quality of of Google because you probably experienced same thing I'm experiencing. When you try to Google something, it's like because of the AI thing, I'm like, y'all, your product's getting worse. Now, that's probably because we're old and we're not searching on TikTok, which is where the rest of the people search. Which was Google's defense. Google's like, I'm not worried about Netscape or Ask Jeeves. I'm worried about TikTok.

• 54:48Speaker 05

  Like, that's a search engine. And they're like, fam, no, it's not. What are you talking about? The psychology or the the power of the default is when your brand is so strong that you just don't think of, you don't even think, of course, there's alternatives. You don't even think of it. Which is like a new strategy to argue that somebody has a monopoly. So what's the solution? The solution is to break up the company. That's that's that's usually what the what it means. Now, like I told you before,

• 55:21Speaker 05

  what happened with Microsoft was basically like they were supposed to split up Microsoft Office from

• 55:29Speaker 05

  from Windows. So that's that was the plan for Google. It's like you remember this is a Alphabet's a two trillion dollar company. So one of his suggestion was like divest divesting the Android operating system was like the most frequently discussed option by the Justice Department's attorney. And then some were suggesting the force of the adwords, like you have to sell that. And Google got to let go of that program, right? The search ad program, right? A divestment from that, from its Chrome like web browser. But at the end of the day, they haven't landed on an actual verdict as to how to solve this. They've just said,

• 56:14Speaker 05

  no, you violated antitrust laws. You're going to have to break up this company. Just curved.

• 56:52Speaker 05

  Now, things like this is where your super conservative capitalist argues is a problem. Because it seems as though this is not free market capitalism. They're like, let the consumer decide. We just did good business and the government shouldn't interfere. These are the same people that don't want the EPA to exist, you know? So if there's mad cow disease in your beef, they like, people will stop buying it, so just leave us alone. That's their argument, like, well, I mean, tell everybody else get their weight up. They don't want no interference.

• 57:36Speaker 05

  Which I guess I would understand too if I owned a company and was making a kajillion dollars. But I'm a consumer that really just want to be able to have good products, afford the products we have, and not hear somebody like Jeff Bezos in his rocket that looked like a penis, who didn't even actually make it in the space, and then to say, hey, you guys did this by buying stuff. Like, don't nobody want to see that. Like, okay, listen, here's the underbelly. We know, alright? The thing is, we ain't got no choice.

• 58:16Speaker 05

  Amazon might be next in this. This is the deal we've made without having an option to make this deal. We know we making y'all rich, but we also need to live. And sometimes, if you that person, man, the consumer like us, it kind of feel good that there's some big homies that might be able to come in and say, hey, y'all don't get to treat the little homies like that, because, man, that's some good stuff. Hood politics, y'all.

• 59:02Speaker 05

  Alright now, don't you hit stop on this pod. You better listen to these credits. I need you to finish this thing so I can get the download numbers, okay? So, don't stop it yet. But listen, this was recorded in East Los Boyle Heights by your boy Propaganda. Tap in with me at PropHipHop.com. If you're into cold brew coffee, we got Terraform Cold Brew. You can go there, dot com, and use promo code HUD. Get 20% off, get yourself some coffee. This was mixed, edited, and mastered by your boy Matt Alsowski, killing the beat softly. Check out his website, MattAlsowski.com. I'ma spell it for you because I know.

• 59:44Speaker 05

  M-A-T-T-O-S-O-W-S-K-I dot com. MattAlsowski.com. He got more music and stuff like that on there, so go and check out The Heat. Hub Politics is a member of Cool Zone Media, executive produced by Sophie Lichterman, part of the iHeart Media Podcast Network. Your theme music and scoring is also by the one and only Matt Alsowski, still killing the beat softly. So, listen, don't let nobody lie to you. If you understand urban living, you understand politics. These people is not smarter than you. We'll see y'all next week.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  ... Only on Underdog. Unleash your dog. Eighteen plus. Terms apply. Top grails are extremely rare.

• 1:01:10Robert Evans?

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• 1:02:43Speaker 05

  Words are funny. That's how I'm opening this. Because, look, there's sounds that we just decided meant stuff. I, to the point to where sounds can make you take somebody life. And sometimes, the same sound can mean different things, depending on their spelling, their context. I'll give you an example. When black people say barbecue, we could be talking about three Three different things. We could be talking about the food barbecue. We could be talking about, as in like the style of cooking barbecue, the food.

• 1:03:25Speaker 05

  We could be talking about the actual act of cooking that food to barbecue. We could be talking about an event. We are going to the barbecue. You not invited to the barbecue. What the, what the East call the cookout, we call it a barbecue out here, out west. You know, it's the same with the Latinos, like with Mexicans, they say the carne asada. They mean one of three things. They mean the act of grilling. We are going to have a carne asada. That is, we're gonna have barbecue, we're gonna grill, and we are going to eat carne asada, at the carne asada. Like, they just, it's the name of the food, it's the act of grilling, and it's the event. So, that's the Mexican version of saying, when we be like, oh, you ain't invited to the barbecue.

• 1:04:08Speaker 05

  They say you not invited to the carne asada. Like, that's what they mean. The word is the same. It mean three different things. Depending on the context, and when it's coming out their mouth, you could figure out what's happening. Now, I say all that to get very serious. I wanna talk about the word Zion. Oh, it's about to get, I felt like I heard the record scratch right now. Because if you've listened to reggae music, if you've heard anything made by Bob Marley, you done heard the word Zion many times. You a fan of Lauryn Hill? What's the name of her child? Zion. Now that uh, in my world is Zion. Black people love Zion. Mount Zion.

• 1:04:52Speaker 05

  A boy on the side of Babylon trying to front like he down with Mount Zion. Ooh la la la, is the way that we rock when we doing our thing. The black hotel roster, you know, chew stick, we love Zion. We're chanting down Babylon. Babylon is, will be defeated by Mount Zion. Is that the same Zion? In Israel and Palestine, what y'all mean by that? Then what the hell is a Zionist? So is that somebody that believe in Mount Zion? Like what, how, what is Zionism? And I'm sure if you listen to this show, data ops, right?

• 1:05:36Speaker 05

  You, you convince Zion, like those are the ops. So I don't know if the thought has ever crossed your mind to be like, well, is, is the Zionism that y'all talking about the same Zion and Zionist that the rosters are talking about? What it, what, what? Maybe this never crossed your mind, but it's the, the word needs to be dissected. So I am using this moment to teach you two things. What do the rosters mean when they say Zion? And what is Zionism and its history? All right, hood politics.

• 1:06:25Speaker 05

  Okay, listen, first, before I get into it, this week is like this.

• 1:06:39Speaker 05

  It's like this, son. It's like that, son. A rum pumping. Let me take the news serious. All right, this week is like this. Well, the Olympics ended and I'm only excited about breaking. I'm sad that it's not going to be in 2028 and it's not because of Ray Gun. They decided before her that they weren't going to do it in LA, which sucks. I don't know why they decided that, but they decided that way back in 2020. Having said that, speaking of Ray Gun, I know she's taken over the memes. I feel bad for these amazing b-boys and b-girls, specifically logistics. Sorry, that's a text. Specifically logistics, Anak murdered them fools.

• 1:07:23Speaker 05

  And while she was in the middle of slaying, absolutely slaying Ray Gun. Here's the thing, have you ever been in a battle? Okay, now I'm from LA, so that double time, kind of what you think is Bone Thugs and Harmony chopping and stuff, that originates at a place called The Good Life.

• 1:07:44Speaker 05

  Project Bloat, this group called Freestyle Fellowship. And that is a sound that just kinda came from the LA Underground. My, I don't rap like that. So if you're at a spot and you're battling somebody and they killing it on the double time, it's killing the crowd. You have, you, I can't compete with that. You gotta go all the way the other way. You gotta get real creative and try to do something else. So for me, it becomes, I'm gonna try to do the contrast and do sort of a slow flow with a gang of wordplay and get really creative with a pattern. My time rhymes to find the mind Saturn. Roller skate rhymes to find a con catern. Boom ba boom batter, do for the full flatter. You will flatter, you know what I'm saying? I'll make you scatter, like just something else.

• 1:08:29Speaker 05

  You gotta take a chance. And sometimes it lands. Sometimes it doesn't, okay? You get creative, you take a shot, like, take old Dirty Bastard. He don't rap like the rest of Wu-Tang. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. And I picked up when she was throwing down. She was trying to rap the Aussie land, do animal style kangaroo hops to rap her soil and be creative. Sometimes it works, sometimes it don't. Now, I don't know nothing about her husband being in charge of no thing and all that good stuff that they were saying. All I know is, you have to battle a lot of people to get to the top.

• 1:09:13Speaker 05

  And battling is very subjective and sometimes creativity and style points count, but when your creativity just swing and a miss. She clearly don't have no power moves. She was battling logistics who got style, finesse, flavor, dance, intangibles, and power moves. What are you gonna do? I saw a head spinning there, but she clearly don't have no power moves. So she's trying to fight back with style. Just didn't work. So I'm saying this as somebody who has been in a battle and sometimes you lose your train of thought and the words sound like gibberish. She, she took a, she took a creative chance. And it was a swing and a miss. Sometimes it happens.

• 1:09:58Speaker 05

  On a serious note, okay, receipts are being pulled on walls and on JD and everybody involved. And we trying to figure it out. The Democrats are doing they best to make Project 2025 Trump's thing, which it is not. It is somebody trying to tie it to Trump. I can't believe I'm saying this. In his defense, that is a lot of overlap, but that's they own thing. Now, Trump is all cap saying Trump, he don't know who them people are because he know who they are and he know what they want. So that's cap, but it's in his defense is not his. Now, secondly, in JD Vance's defense, I know, I know what it sounds like, but I'm gonna say it. He being dragged over this

• 1:10:37Speaker 05

  App Harvest startup. So that was a company that was an agricultural company that was supposed to be in Appalachia and was going to give hundreds and hundreds of jobs to the area. Everybody got excited. It was like dope, man. He one of us. Or at least you told us he one of us. It's gonna be a fresh job. Now, again, he was an investor and he was just on the board. Now, I have sat on a couple of boards and just because you on the board don't mean you in charge of operation. Now, and just because you an investor, don't mean you in charge of the money. Now, you got a lot of say, obviously, but you can't necessarily be blamed for everything that go bad and you can't necessarily take the praise for everything that go good. Now,

• 1:11:21Speaker 05

  not only did this business fail, before it failed, they was talking about it was 110, 120 degrees inside that building because it's a greenhouse. The conditions were terrible. And while everybody was like, man, I can't work in here, they brought in not a couple migrant workers, not even Mike, undocumented, 500 of them, 500 undocumented workers, which in any other scenario. All right, what do I care? The reason why any of us care is because you supposed to be Captain Appalachia. You called yourself that. If you didn't call yourself Captain Appalachia, it would have just been a failed thing. But you set yourself up as Robin Hood of the woods. So since you did that, you, I mean, what you gonna say, homie?

• 1:12:06Speaker 05

  That's on your watch. You confront like you one of us, but that ain't really hurting nobody. Now you hurting us saying you one of us. So he gonna have to answer to that. And his answer was, yeah, it sucked. I invested and I was on the board, but I mean, I wasn't in charge. And in his defense, he's right. Now, if these walls could talk, y'all still calling that man tampon ten, as if you ain't. All you got to do, beloved, is read it. You can read the law. It is all over Beyonce's internet. I'mma read it for you. Article one, general education. Section one, 121a dot 212. Access to menstrual products.

• 1:12:46Speaker 05

  A school district charter must provide students with access to menstrual products at no charge. The products must be available to all menstruating students in restrooms, regularly used by students in grades four through 12, according to the plan developed by the school district. For purposes of this section, menstrual products means pads, tampons, or other similar products used in connection to menstrual cycle. That's it. That's what the law say. Not a whole, you putting tampons in boys bathrooms? I mean, okay, I just read you the law. That's what the law say. So just, you know, cap down a little bit. Now, the DNC has started. We looking for you to put some words to your excitement, auntie.

• 1:13:30Speaker 05

  We looking for Joe to like, you know, go out in a blaze of glory. And it's all week this week. Now, I did get to watch a lot of Mondays. Not enough to do a full recap, but the thing that's most interesting right now is the comparison to the 1968 one, which was, there's a lot of similarities. There was a huge protest that happened in 68 against the Vietnam War, and right now, there's a huge protest. Protest going on against the war in Gaza. The difference in nineteen sixty eight and now is the cops beat the brakes off them protesters on TV. Like we all saw it. This time, see, Robert and Sophie and Garrett are out there and they pretty much have kind of behaved.

• 1:14:15Speaker 05

  It's pretty chill, you know, and now we'll see, but right now it's been pretty chill, relatively speaking. And what's different this time is Joe went off script. Joe said, you know what them protesters out there? They got a point, innocent people being killed on both sides. Now that would, now Sophie says she got a view of the teleprompter. That wasn't on the script. Now, of course, we're all grabbing for scraps, but good for him. That's a good scrap to grab. I'm so glad you acknowledged it rather than acting like it's just a party on the inside. The campaigns of Harris and of Trump have been hacked by Iran, according to the US intelligence. It's not like this wasn't expected.

• 1:14:56Speaker 05

  Country's been tapping into our elections as a sport. They've been doing this for a long time. Iran is not happy. Iran is like you, not only did you kill Kasim Suleimani, you just popped another, we believe you just popped another person on our soil recently. Because you gotta remember, like, Israel and America are interchangeable to them. They don't, ain't no difference. Share, that means that y'all need to double check all sources. That mean you need to question everything coming at you and keep your antennas high. You know, another interesting difference is, is that the news didn't report it.

• 1:15:34Speaker 05

  They didn't report the stuff that was in the leak, you know, and man, in twenty sixteen, this was like catnip all the leaks, you know, butter emails. It's almost like we learned a lesson, like, you know, uh. And there's a few ways to look at it, right? It's like, hey, like, if it's something in there that's like really like American people need to know, it's like, what's your duty as the media to be like, okay? I know how we got it, but like this kind of too real to talk about it, to not talk about it. On the other hand, it's like, you know, when people make fun of your little brother? And they be right about him, but you can't make fun of him. I don't want to hear from you. Like you can't say nothing about my little brother.

• 1:16:20Speaker 05

  Your mom being like, you telling on your little brother, your mom like, why you snitching?

• 1:16:26Speaker 05

  I don't want to hear from you. Just because like, no, you don't get to talk about it. So the news was like, I mean, thank you, because they sent, they sent the content of the hacks to ProPublica. They was like, yo, you can have it. ProPublica was like, okay, cool. Thank you, but like, I don't need to get this from you. I, I mean, respect. And finally, there's another rumor of a ceasefire deal. And I say rumor because that's exactly what it sound like, because Anthony Blinken like, yo, it's good. We just waiting on Hamas. Benjamin Netanyahu said like, I ain't agree to nothing. I don't know what you talking about. They still haven't met our terms. And in the middle of that, we just still sent 20 million dollars to them people. So, uh, let's be real, can't nobody really tell another country what to do. You can't really,

• 1:17:11Speaker 05

  there's no way an American president can stop a country from going to war to another country. But what they can do is not pay for it. Anyway, let's get to what Zion is.

• 1:17:39Speaker 05

  All right, now I'm back. Now, listen, I am going to do both these things an incredible injustice because both of these topics will take a lifetime to understand. And both of these topics could have many different interpretations depending on your understanding of history, politics, religion. Remember when I wanted to talk to y'all about the Houthis, Hezbollah, all of these different topics where I'm like, when you get into a religion, just like, listen, listen, when I say Christian, it's the same concept. When I say Christian, we talk about Mount Zion all the time. Matter of fact, if you black, you probably went to Mount Zion AME.

• 1:18:25Speaker 05

  New Gethsemane Church of God in Christ. Now, I made that up right now. There's probably is a new guest. There's probably a Mount Zion AM me. I know there is. There's one in South Central. What I'm trying to say is, we use these terms all the time because they in the Bible. But when I say Christian, that's what I mean. Now, when you say Christian, you may think Holy Roller Pentecostal. You may think Trump. You may think, you may think Catholic. You may think, there's so many other things you might think that are all these different. So you ask, you ask 10 different Christians, what does it mean to be Christian? You gonna get 10 different answers. Most likely. Remember, we did the Terraform episode with the homie Kevin Garcia, and I tried to break down in the beginning. It was tough,

• 1:19:07Speaker 05

  but I tried to give y'all a cursory understanding of like Western church history. You see how I had to give that caveat that I'm talking about Western church? Like, we ain't talking Coptic. We not talking Greek Orthodox. We not talking Russian Jesuit. Like, there's, you could really get lost in the weeds. So, please give me that grace, that what I am about to talk to you about is grossly truncated, okay? But it's just to help y'all understand, so that as you have your picket signs out, that at least you don't sound like a her. So first, let me teach y'all what the Rastadim,

• 1:19:49Speaker 05

  what the Rastadim mean when they say Mount Zion, and I'm sorry about my patois Rastadim.

• 1:20:09Speaker 05

  Okay, first, let me step back and say what I'm, what is Rastafarianism. Now, I would say like globally, it's probably one of the youngest world religions, getting its roots by name in the 1930s, deriving from the Ethiopian Emperor Khalil Selassie. Okay, now, as I say this, again, like Rasta, Rastafarian, like, this is not a-

• 1:20:35Speaker 05

  Compartmentalized philosophy or religion. This is a way of life, right? A livity. You know, this is, this is our culture, our heritage, our history, right? And our way of being, which some could argue is, well, that's the definition of a religion. Religion, a way of being, right? Your, um, your liturgy. Anyway, there is an encompassing around this. Now, it is impossible to separate Rasta from the African-ness of it. Okay? So, the belief is this. When you listen to Roots Reggae, when you listen to, you know, Bob Marley and them, like, there's so much to cover.

• 1:21:20Speaker 05

  Dancehall, like, that's the club music. Roots Reggae, like, you think of this as like worship, like, this is praise and worship. There is a tie going back to the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. Uh, now, I'm getting into my Old Testament. This is why there's so much Judaism and Christian tied to it. Because there is a belief that, and it's, and it's, and rightfully so, because if you believe the Bible, it's in the scriptures, is that the Queen of Sheba, which was, it's believed to be an ancient queen from the region of Ethiopia. Now, obviously Ethiopia is a nation-state, but Ethiopia as, as a continual connection of tribes,

• 1:22:05Speaker 05

  Oromo, Tigri, like, just the different tribes that are there. They have, Ethiopia and Thailand shares the legacy of being the only two countries that were never colonized or conquered. Is, not Israel, Italy almost did, right? The British almost did, but they were never able to actually colonize Ethiopia. And Ethiopia takes a lot of pride in this. So, there are a lot of their lineage and heritage because their history wasn't cut off or attempted to be erased. You can know a lot about them. Ethiopia in the scriptures, in the Bible, is called the land of Kush also, right?

• 1:22:46Speaker 05

  It's believed that Moses's wife, Zipporah, was from Ethiopia when Moses, this is all Old Testament stuff, but it's all makes sense. It all, it all makes sense as to why the connection is so important to them. Moses, before the whole, let my people go, before the Ten Commandments type joint, Moses supposedly, according to the story, saw a, one of Pharaoh's guards abusing one of the Jewish slaves. And he hopped up and killed the guy, and then he had to run. And so then when he ran, he ran to the, uh, to Midian, and he married Jethro's daughter.

• 1:23:28Speaker 05

  And it was believed that that area was Ethiopia. Okay, so like, at least the region that we now call Ethiopia. So there's this belief that Moses's first wife was Ethiopia. You fast forward to Solomon, King David, King David's son, right? The writer of Psalms. And it's believed that, according to the passages, that he had never seen anybody more beautiful or a kingdom more amazing than the kingdom that the queen of Sheba came from. Now you fast forward to Emperor Selassie, and Emperor Selassie, a Romo Ethiopian man

• 1:24:08Speaker 05

  who became the, the emperor of what we know to be Ethiopia, right? Geopolitically, but it's a belief that his bloodline can be traced back to King Solomon, right? The emperor bloodline of Ethiopia can be traced back to King Solomon. That's, that's the Rastaf belief. Again, ask many Rastas, you might get many answers. But overall, this is the belief, right? Now, set that aside, okay? Another connection is in, I know it's a lot of Bible stuff, but you gotta follow me because we are talking about Jews and Rastas. So of course, we're gonna talk about the Bible, right? Now, the Book of Acts in the Bible

• 1:24:51Speaker 05

  has this story of this one of the apostles named Philip. And Philip runs into an Ethiopian eunuch who, according to the Bible, was reading the Book of Isaiah. And Philip sees him on the road, and he's like, You know what you're reading? And the dude's like, how can I know if nobody teaches him? So he sits down with him and he, according to the scripture, according to the Bible, explains Isaiah, the prophecies, the Messiah, the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, and how all that stuff was prophesied in the book of Isaiah, blah, blah. So he ties all the things. And then it says that this Ethiopian eunuch got baptized right then.

• 1:25:33Speaker 05

  Now, it is then believed that he brought Christianity as we know it. Their belief is like, we, we saw it right there. But prob, I thought Rasta was Jamaican. I'll get to it. So, so that's, that's tie number three, right? Now, the fourth tie, which is one of the most compelling things to me between the Jews, Zion and Ethiopia, is the city of Aksim. So the city of Aksim is in the northern part of Ethiopia and is known to be, and is truthfully, the, the oldest, the first and oldest Christian city. Because contrary to what your little white pastor will teach you, the faith went to Africa before it went to Europe.

• 1:26:19Speaker 05

  Okay? It, hell, it went to Mongolia before it went to Europe. The point is, the white man ain't teach us who Jesus was. Now, it is also believed that the Ark of the Covenant from the Old Testament is in Aksim. There are ruins at different churches that have good archaeological evidence to believe that they set up the tent with the dimensions that Exodus and Deuteronomy and them, and them Old Testament scriptures have taught them to do this. There are, if you go to Israel now, black Ethiopian Jewish people. As a matter of fact, they, the, to be able to, now getting into the, to the modern politics,

• 1:27:03Speaker 05

  to be able to repatronize, to be able to come back to Israel as a Jew, you'd have to prove by your DNA that you have Jewish heritage. You are in, in fact, an ethnic Jew. And the Ethiopians, there's a sect of Ethiopia. That not only can prove it, but are some argue the closest like DNA related to what might be the ancient Israeli, right? They're the like that some would argue that as far as the diaspora, not as far as like people ain't never left. I'm talking about as far as the diaspora, right? So they are, it can truly say, and there's a lot of traditions that in certain parts of Ethiopia,

• 1:27:43Speaker 05

  that they continued far longer and are actually far more closely related to the ancient practices than what modern Israel looks like. This is just, it's just history. Now, because anti-blackness is universal, when they got to Israel, the modern Israel, a lot of Ethiopian women were sterilized. And if you walk around Jerusalem, just like everywhere else, the people doing all of the, all of the dirty work, all of the brunt work, all of the jobs nobody want are the black one, unfortunately. That being said, the tie between Ethiopia, the ancient religion of Judaism,

• 1:28:26Speaker 05

  and the ancient people of Israel, one because of the region, one because of folklore, and one because of DNA, has Ethiopia is verifiably connected to whatever the ancient Jerusalem was. Okay, you fast forward to Hali Selassie in the 1930s, who they believe, according to the Rastafarian, is, I want to say 225th, I think that's what my cousin told me, 225th, don't quote me on this, I'm just quoting my cousin, of the Solomonic dynasty. So they believe that like the actual king, like a descendant of King David, right? A son of David, kind of like who Jesus was,

• 1:29:08Speaker 05

  a descendant of David, right, was also Selassie. You following me? Okay. Now, the word Rastafarian comes from Hali Selassie, which is Ras Tafari, right? It was his name, right? Uh, he was one of the only independent black leaders in Africa at the time, right? So he bears this cultural, political, historical, and symbolic importance to just the African diaspora. Now, once you get into the practices of Rastafarianism, like again, like the Rastadim, the way of life,

• 1:29:47Speaker 05

  like the diet, you know, avoiding shellfish, eating seafood, like it's pretty similar to like kosher practices. Again, because they have this tie to the land, the history. So there's, there's a lot of practices that are like, that are that they, they, they have a lot of practices about being welcoming to the sojourner, about the way that we collectively sing. Jah is a Jamaican version of saying Yah, which is short for Yahweh. So when we say Jah Rastafari, you know, it's your Jah is Yah, Yahweh, or Jehovah, right? So these, a lot of them are vegetarian, they don't eat meat at all, definitely not beef or pork.

• 1:30:33Speaker 05

  Cause you keep the temple clean, right? You very rarely are gonna find an overweight Rasta. Like they're usually in incredibly good shape. The dreadlocks have to do with what's called the vow of the Nazirite, because again, we're talking Old Testament. Samson, in the Bible, you know, Samson with his golden locks, you know, the Samson in Delilah, like Samson had took what's called a Nazirite vow, which was a vow to keep himself holy to the Lord. And the symbol of that holiness to the Lord was not crush, cutting your hair. This is as a symbol of our holiness, the vow of the Nazirite, you grow your dreadlocks, right? Dreadlocks was a term given to us by the British that we just own. Nazi dread! So because our hair, our locks were dreadful, so dreadlocks.

• 1:31:19Speaker 05

  There's also sects that believe that like God grabs the dead souls by their dreadlocks and bring them to, brings them to heaven. Again, there's, the symbol's beautiful, but either way, it's a symbol of the promise, your commitment to keeping yourself sanctified to the Father, right? Is, if you're being a traditional Rastadim.

• 1:31:44Speaker 05

  Now, their belief, different than, it's still, again, so follow me. This is still an Abrahamic faith. That's why you're gonna hear terms like Mao Zedong, right? Which I'm gonna get to specifically in a second. But their belief, different than Christianity, although similar in a lot of ways, similar to Judaism in a lot of ways. Their belief is that, like I said, Selassie was the Messiah, right? This is an Afrocentric belief. How did it get to Jamaica? The transatlantic slave trade. So it gets to Jamaica via the slave trade. We got carted off. Remember, this is an Afrocentric belief. And when Africans got brought to Jamaica, they brought their beliefs.

• 1:32:26Speaker 05

  And then it synced, you know, had a lot of syncretism with a lot of like the voodoo and tribal and Caribbean practices. You know, a lot of the stuff that was happening in the Caribbean that, because again, this is East Africa, West Africa with the Arishi and the, you know, and a lot of the West African beliefs are a little more animist, you know, and not so Abrahamic, if you will, right? All that to say, just like any other faith, tradition, or practice, when it travels, it takes on a lot of the personalities, traditions, and practices of the people that it traveled with and the location it lands.

• 1:33:09Speaker 05

  So the music that you hear, because obviously if you hear music in Ethiopia, it don't sound like reggae, because reggae is Jamaican, right? So what you consider Rastafarian, you think Caribbean, because that's, I mean, I get it, right? And Ethiopia is Christian, right? Of course, there's, obviously, it's a modern country. There's millions of religions there. Not millions, but you know what I mean. There's a lot of different religions there, but Ethiopia is Christian. Rasta...

• 1:33:42Speaker 05

  That's birthed out of the diaspora that has its tie to Ethiopia. Y'all following me? Okay, you have people like Marcus Garvey, right? Who we need to at some point do a whole study on him and the back to Africa movement. And I don't have time to get into the depths of Marcus Garvey. But, but the point was, as far as the Pan African experience were those who, the diaspora, we who got separated from our land, whether it was your run of the mill black Baptist slave in Tuscaloosa, right? In Mobile, Alabama, Backwoods, a preacher in, you know, Macon, Georgia, that we was on the plantations.

• 1:34:27Speaker 05

  If a Bible got into our hands, it was so easy to see ourselves in the children of Israel. Like, it's not hard to see if you read the book of Exodus, you like, well, damn, that's us. It was too, it was too, the connection is too obvious. We're like, oh, my gosh, carted off into slavery from a distant land. Like, and then there's a longing for a return to your promised land. The cit, and the capital of my promised land is the city of Zion. You following me? It would be the same in the Caribbean for the Rastadim, but they looking back at Selassie. It is Rastafarianism is by definition anti-colonial, obviously, and they believe that Africa is

• 1:35:12Speaker 05

  their, not only their, their literal ancestral homeland, but it's their spiritual homeland. And the country of Ethiopia gets a particular reverence because of the role it played in the 19th century for, for the resistance of, because of Selassie, for the resistance of European imperialism. Everybody else fell. Ethiopia didn't. So the gold, green and red colors of the modern Ethiopia flag are the traditional colors of the Rastafarian because it can in some ways get it roots, gets its roots from there. Right? Okay, I know that was a long preamble, but you got to understand what you told me. So, once you have this understanding of your connection to.

• 1:35:51Speaker 05

  Judaism, practice, anti-colonial, you know, dispersed, taken away from your homeland, and longing for a return to your promised land. Now we could talk about what Zion is. Now Rastafarian has two basic tent poles. Zion, Babylon. You hear that stuff in all the reggae you listen to, right? So, these are the theological ideology ideological tent poles. The dichotomy is tied again to the anti-colonial origins. Because Babylon, remember, again, in your Old Testament, is the symbol of the evil powers, the evil empire, just like in the Bible. It's the, the, the, the epitome.

• 1:36:36Speaker 05

  It is everything that's wrong in the world. It's the system is symbolized in King Nebuchadnezzar and the, and the, and the Kingdom of Babylon. And we long to see Babylon fall. We chant down this worldly system that enslaves and, and, and, and attacks and, and, and seeks to control not only the outward person, but the inside of you. What, what Christians would call your sin nature, worldly Babylon, right? So if you're following, again, the saga of the Old Testament, Israel fleeing Egypt or getting away from Egypt, becoming free, and then being enslaved by Babylon again. Babylon's the problem. Does that make sense?

• 1:37:17Speaker 05

  Now, in the Bible, Zion is just another name for Jerusalem, right? And it can refer to the land of Israel fully. Now, the Rastafarian, okay, this is where our difference is, repurposed the biblical definition to an Afrocentric direction. For the Rasta, Zion is the continent of Africa, specifically Ethiopia. But the term represents not just

• 1:37:49Speaker 05

  A, a, a, a, a physical place because Ethiopia is just Ethiopia. But it's an ideal. It's what we would call to become cross. It's, this is paradise. This is thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Zion, heaven and earth meets. So it's not ju, it's, it's physical and so much more. Which in a lot of ways is the same for the Jew, but we'll get to that. It is the destruction of a worldly system and the raising of a selected godly kingdom. Where all of us, what we would talk about, the Christians would talk about the kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. Is to be a part of the kingdom.

• 1:38:33Speaker 05

  So it's a both place and it's an idea to strive for, right? Where the Rastas, they would equate with preserving and glorifying black African culture. Right? The iron lion of Zion, you know, eh, Bob Marley's, you know, song. But for more information, like Rastafarian is kind of like, like how we have denominations. There's a divided into mansions and they got it from like the Gospel of John. When Jesus says, in my father's house, there are many mansions, right? Again, I'm telling you, it's an Abrahamic faith. A lot of people don't think it's just a, it's a black, you know, anti-colonial African outpour of it, right? So you have like the Bobo, the Ashanti, the 12 tribes.

• 1:39:17Speaker 05

  That's a, that's a, a denomination, if you will, they were called the 12 tribes of Israel. The Nai, I never pronounce it right, but the Naiab, the Naiabebingi, like I never pronounce it right, but uh, they're a certain type. Now some, again, there are, some look more traditional than others. And then a lot of people just follow like an individual, like Rastafarian way of viewing it. But at the end of the day, um, Ethiopia.

• 1:39:44Speaker 05

  Is, for lack of a better term, the new Jerusalem. This is Zion when we're talking about Rastadent. Okay? Now, what the Zionists believe, next.

• 1:40:46Speaker 05

  All right, we're back. Now, Zionism, the name, the overall name for, right now, you know, if you're pro-Palestine, that's the name of the bad guys. They're Zionists. And people have tried to separate the idea of antisemitism from Zionists, being anti-Zionists, that these are different things. Now, that would mean that you'd have to understand all those things and their history from them. Now, I'm trying to handle this like with as much respect as I can because I'm talking about a culture that's not mine. Right? So, please grant me that grace that there's, I'm probably gonna overlook, like I said in the beginning, I'm probably gonna overlook some stuff that I'm not trying to overlook.

• 1:41:31Speaker 05

  I'm trying to give as best as I can an understanding, right, of these different things. Antisemite, that's, I mean, those are the Nazis. You just don't believe that it's a type of thing, it's a type of overall term for the concept of the convolution of this weird idea that all... All that is wrong, like it's almost like you've made the Jew Babylon. You know what I'm saying? Like we just talked about like you. They are everything that's wrong. They are both. They are both the killers of Jesus. They are the vermin that I'm trying to describe antisemitism.

• 1:42:10Speaker 05

  The, the, the, the religion and the ethnicity that somehow or another is poor and subhuman, but also quietly controls all of the inner workings of money and power in the world. And your only solution is to wipe them out. That would be antisemitic. That's the idea of that. That comes from this thing called the Protocols of Zion, which again, the word Zion, I'm talking about, which is something that we've talked about on the Behind the Bastards episodes of the Protocols of Zion. Now, that's antisemitic. Now, once we get into, now, if you remember the, one of the You Wasn't Outside episodes,

• 1:42:53Speaker 05

  when we pulled the clip of a rabbi explaining the idea of what makes a Jew, a Jew, according to the faith, is their covenant with Yahweh. That it's not necessarily a location. As a matter of fact, to see it as a location is to minimize it. Where he was like, the promised land, that our, our, our, our claim is because we are in covenant with Yahweh. And that can happen anywhere. The location don't matter. So to say that the capital has to be in Jerusalem or has to be in Tel Aviv, because that's God's will, is, is, he's like, no, you're missing the point.

• 1:43:35Speaker 05

  Like, who, who cares where a modern nation state plants? Like, that's a secular system. That is, like the Rastadim would say, that is Babylon. To worry about what other nations say, I am a part of the kingdom. And the kingdom exists because I am in covenant with Yahweh. We are a covenant people. That's what makes, that's what gives us our Jewishness, is our covenant with Yahweh. Who cares what the borders are? That would be a, a, a specific type of Judaism, right? A religious type of Judaism. Now, an ethnic Judaism, that's something different. A political Judaism is something different. And that's what we're gonna talk about right now. Zionism as we're talking about, not the Rastadim, but Zionism, you could say,

• 1:44:18Speaker 05

  I'd say go back to August 29th, 1897. It was a meeting on the Rhine River in this small city, like, uh, in Switzerland called Basel, right? Hmm, Basel. Now, this meeting had people from all over the world, and it was to discuss this concept of Zionism. Now, like I said in the bot, like I said, Zion is just a biblical term for Jerusalem, right? So they choose that term because if you're paying attention to Europe, Pagram, it ain't a good place for Jews. It's been all bad for them for a while. And this con, this discussion was to say, we have to have a place because it seemed like no matter where we go, we not want it. Now, they pull in all the way back to more freaking

• 1:45:03Speaker 05

  Canaan to Egypt. They are talking about their deep history and they're like, like, no matter where we go, we not want it. So we need to find a place where we could just be ourselves. And they thought, what better place than our ancestral homeland? Now, if you're looking around this room, you would think the same thing I would think. Y'all white as hell. Like, you're, you're European. I don't under, in the same way that you would probably look at that Ethiopian and go, but you're African. But, but follow me now. So people in, during the time, from like Munich, from Germany, from Poland, from Switzerland, they're like, oh, what are you talking about? Like, I'm just as German as

• 1:45:48Speaker 05

  everybody. They German. They're like, we speak German, like, this is just our religion. Like, I ain't never seen, I never been to Israel. I never seen Israel. Israel's not a thing at the time. That place is Palestine. You know, like, it's not a, that's not a, that's, it would be the same as me saying, I need to go back to Nubia. It was like, Nubia's gone. You know, black people, like, again, a Marcus Garvey thing, but that was closer to their time. Like, you need to go back to, there's no place here wanted for you. I'm just like, well, that's, I don't, I don't, I don't even know the language they speak in Tobo. I'm guessing that because I took an African ancestry and they was And I'm a father side that maybe I like, oh, what do I know about? I don't really think about that. So the Jews at the time were like, what?

• 1:46:30Speaker 05

  I don't this, what are you talking about? Like, it would be the equivalent to a back to Africa movement. To where it's like, I mean, it sounds cool, but like, I mean, it's already people there and I mean, it's been hundreds of years. Like, I'm German, like, we're German. A lot of the rabbis were like, look, first of all, this is blasphemous. We not supposed to return until the Messiah come. Like, that's what the prophecy is, and he gonna bring us back. I don't know about what the hell you doing, right? And then the others, like, the more modern ones were like, well, we're not a nation. Like, that was actually the point. Like, don't you, then you read your Torah? You don't need a king. I'm your king. You're not a nation. Like, that's the point. The point is, you're supposed to be different. I'm your king. You're a part of a kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, and I'll bring you back when it's time when the Messiah come.

• 1:47:12Speaker 05

  So like, whatever y'all doing, that's not even, now I'm saying that, again, this is 1897. That's, that was the belief of them. Now, again, those were some rabbi. And not only that, like I said, they're like, well, I'm French. I don't, what? Anyway, into this guy named Theodore Herzl, right? Who was a journalist who covered this, actually, probably one of the most radicalizing moments for anybody, for any Jew in Europe, right? And it was the case for this man named Alfred Dreyfus, right? Which, uh, basically became like the trial of the century. It was, they called it the Dreyfus affair. And the journalist who covered it was Theodore Herzl. Basically, the Dreyfus was accused of treason.

• 1:47:55Speaker 05

  And found guilty and sentenced to like a work prison. Totally wrongfully convicted, completely out of nowhere. Y'all made all that up, but how that work was like, because he was Jewish, it became not just about him, but that you can't trust the Jew. And Theodore Herzl was watching all this, and he's watching that the people get whipped up into a frenzy. People that was just your neighbors. He was like, again, I'm just as German as you, I'm just as European as you are, like, fam. I, I remember the feeling when Trump first started taking over the, the brains.

• 1:48:31Speaker 05

  Of the white Christian where I was like, dog, we was at Cracker Barrel yesterday. I what happened like I we used to what just what has bewitched you like all of a sudden? Was you like this the whole time? It was super confusing. It's like all of a sudden we're different? Yo, it's me like I've been me this whole time. So Theodore Herzl was like, yo, okay, listen, we clearly not wanted here and it's only gonna get worse. Turns out he was absolutely correct. So he comes up with this idea that is like, he's like, okay, I'm gonna suggest a Jewish state in in the current state of nation of Palestine. Y'all think I'm crazy right now, but in about 50 years, you gonna see.

• 1:49:13Speaker 05

  This was 1897. Guess what happened in 50 years? 1948.

• 1:49:19Speaker 05

  Israel became a nation. Ain't that crazy? So now Zionism, you want to be able to distinguish it between two different types of Zionism, right? And this is where I would critique making the concept the bad guy. Because there's two types here. Okay, there's the Zionism that comes out of a longing for a home. That's where us and the Rastas actually share a place where we can be fully accepted, fully ourselves and fully safe. Because again, we're not wanted anywhere we are, right? So there's a there's a longing for a home that you've been ripped away from, right?

• 1:50:02Speaker 05

  Now, when they say ripped away from, like, we're talking, guess who I'm talking about? King of Babylon. We're talking about the nations being scattered like 580 B.C. When the Ark of the Covenant went missing. And this beautiful, amazing kingdom of Israel that used to exist in modern day Palestine, Israel, in that region that was called Judea at that time, where they existed and then

• 1:50:31Speaker 05

  if you know your history, I've said this so many times in the You Wasn't Outside episodes, that little strip of land has been conquered and colonialized and ran by every possible.

• 1:50:41Speaker 05

  Every possible empire in the modern world, finally by Britain. And then, but as that was happening, the people who were ethnically Israeli, as we mean in the ancient sense, were scattered all over the world. So that's why you could be white as hell in Jewish, and you could be black as hell in Jewish, because they were scattered, right? And then, of course, now you're not gonna marry people while you're there, but somehow or another, they've been able to keep on to their traditions and their religions, because they were also, it's one of those things which are ethnically and religiously and your identity. So, anyway, scattered all over the world, but as we know, there's plenty of people that didn't leave. Again, I'm giving you, you wasn't outside history, which you understand.

• 1:51:22Speaker 05

  So there's this longing of being like, man, this, we used to have a place to be in the world. And you feel like you looking around, everybody else got a place to be in the world. This is born from despair, and rightfully so. But then there's this other type of Zionism that is more like this idea of reclaiming an enthusiasm about our heritage and our culture. Like, we need, we need to be like the same way I would be like loud and black. Like, we need to be black as hell out here. Like, we need to reclaim, take up space and be ourselves, rather than like shrinking ourselves. Like, I wanna reclaim all that it is for us to be us. Now, as a minority, that shouldn't be hard for you to understand.

• 1:52:07Speaker 05

  I mean, that's us sitting here in America, and then you got the Republicans being like, well, you're American first, and I'm like, nah, nigga, I'm black. I got my red, black, and green on the wall, you know? It's the Latinos flying their Mexican flags, and like, nah, we who we are, you feel me? And you're like, well, you're American, you know, it's, you're a no-savo kid. You know, when you finally discover the concept of Islam, you wanna know a little about your own heritage. Yeah, you American, you know, I mean, you from Islos, but you wanna reclaim your history, your heritage, your language, you wanna learn Aztec dances. It's like, so there's that version also. So in that sense, it'd be weird to you when you like, you're like, yo, like, yo, we're Jews. You're like, fool, I'm German. It's like, nigga, you French, like, word?

• 1:52:51Speaker 05

  These people don't love you, like, why you identify as that? You know, so there's, you see that as a lens of Zionism. You, so those, so you have these ideas happening all at the, all around the same sort of time and idea with the same term Zion. So it could be seen as somebody that's like, yo, like, I want to learn our ancient language. I want to learn our practices. I want to do the Shabbat. I want to like, I want to bring back, it became this umbrella term for just what it meant to like reclaim your culture, reclaim your identity, reclaim the fullness of what y'all are. And then there's the geopolitical idea. Now, this geopolitical idea borrowed from all of these particular concepts.

• 1:53:36Speaker 05

  And if you read the writings of Theodore Herzl and a lot of the people involved in this, they were all bright eyed about the idea that like, oh, this is going to be a colonial takeover of Palestine. You have to remove the indigenous population for this to happen because there's no way they're going to give it to me. And there were certain ways they tried to do it. They tried to do it peacefully. One way they said was, well, first of all, let's go talk to Britain. Because remember, the British Empire actually drew the partition. The British Empire is the one that drew the line between Israel and Palestine because, remember, it used to belong to them.

• 1:54:20Speaker 05

  Another idea that the Zionists had was, yo, let's go talk to the Turkish Empire, right? Because remember, the Ottomans were there before the British. And they was like, okay, so if you let us be a government, how about we pay all the debts? Well, what if we pay y'all's debts? They were trying, but matter of fact, Israel, the location, wasn't even their first choice. Because they was like, this is a little too complicated. They thought about going to Africa. They looked at a couple of different places as to where to land this geopolitical idea of Zionism. I'm telling this out of order. Let me back up.

• 1:54:56Speaker 05

  So the idea that like, it's just a myth that the Zionists were not aware of the Palestinian Arab population. They were well aware of it. But the question is, what to do with that information? Because yeah, as Jewish as Herzl was, he's also a European. So that like, he saw the Arabs as barbaric, like that they were, I mean, it's just, there's no other way around it. They were well aware that you are going to have to displace people to build a nation like this. So that was not, they knew, right? Now, again, I'm talking about the geopolitical idea of Zionism. But their idea was like, surely y'all can see that like, we're not a big empire, we're not here, like, we're just, we're just looking

• 1:55:40Speaker 05

  for a place to be, you know? And since we're from here anyway, it should, this shouldn't be a problem. So yeah, so like I said, Herzl went to the, went to the British, he went to the Ottoman Empire, and he asked them like, yo, can we just go settle? Keep in mind, is like, European Jews had been moving to Tel Aviv for a while. You know, they actually formed the city of Tel Aviv, right? Those, those were Jewish settlers from Israel that's formed the city of Tel Aviv. This is well before Israel became a state, right? So they had already been moving, now they were just like, we just need legitimacy. So how about we buy it from the Ottomans? And, you know, the emperor of, of, of, of the Ottoman Empire

• 1:56:24Speaker 05

  was like, bro, I can't sell you land, like, it belongs to the people. And they fought to conquer this place. I'm not even finna just, I'm finna just sell it to you. And not only did he not sell it to them, he started building policy to make sure that they can't just be immigrating and just buying up Palestinian land. He was like, I'm not really, I'm not really- Here for this and like, why would I welcome like a large religious minority into my empire? You might take it over. So like I said, he was like, I, I can't look. They not just letting us come. Now they restricting our thing, our, our movement. He even, like I said, he went back to the British Empire, asked for a spot in East Africa, like, can we just?

• 1:57:07Speaker 05

  And the Jews back home, it was like, nigga, we're going, we're going back to Zion. The hell you talking about East Africa for? He's, Hertz was like, bro, I'm trying, right? So eventually they founded city of Tel Aviv. They create their own, like anybody else, like you created Chinatown, you created, like you create your own community. Then them niggas got organized. Now, now the, the timeline, I'm telling you this, like I said, remember he had this first idea in 1897. So this is all during the times between like World War One, World War Two. Remember Britain didn't take over until 1917. Because that's why he was building with the Ottoman Empire dudes. Once, and, and, and then once they was gone, once British, once Britain take, took over, 1917. We're about, we're seeing the end of World War One, right?

• 1:57:50Speaker 05

  You're thinking maybe this was a new world and it all hell broke loose with the Nazi empire. And at that point, once the Nazis thing started happening, it was like, oh nigga, we gotta go. Like this, we can't be playing games. We trying to play nice, like, like that, the Nazi thing? Kick this mug into high gear. So now by 1947, it's like, it, now it's like the Jews are like a third of the population in, in Palestine at the time, right? So, so now it's getting a little itchy, you know what I'm saying? Like now, y'all just, y'all just over here and if you are Arab nation, you like, okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Okay, why we gotta lose our home because of stuff Europe did? Why are we paying the price?

• 1:58:34Speaker 05

  That's like, I, I feel you, you know what I'm saying? Like that's terrible what you going through, but like, why you gotta come? Why you gotta take our house? Why, why y'all gotta be like, what's going on right now? But anyway, since nobody's handing it to them, now we got numbers. Since nobody's just gonna let us be here, the only way to do this is by force. So them dudes made a military. Now it's time to scrap for it. But as you know, this is still a British outpost. Finally, Britain's like, okay, listen, I I'm done with all this. When were we gonna do? Y'all get that part? Y'all get that part? They created the partition, but they said, now y'all figure out what is what and who run this and all that like I'm done. And there, at that moment, the birth of the nation of Israel.

• 1:59:18Speaker 05

  The lines created by Britain after they left in Palestine, looking around here going, man, what?

• 1:59:27Speaker 05

  What just happened right now? And then, like I said, in you other in other you wasn't outside episodes, rest of the Arab nations was like, oh, hell no. Like, if they went to war immediately, everybody jumped them. Egypt, everybody jumped, it was like, and then, and look, Israel won. Like defeated, like they just.

• 1:59:49Speaker 05

  What is y'all do? Like, who are you? Why you get to be a nation? But that's what happened, and we still scrapping over it. Nation states again have more to do with the recognition of other nations and who gets to decide who gets what power and all this good stuff. I like we said, borders are made up, they're drawn by conquerors. It's not, don't let that fool you. The concept that has people out in the streets is the type of Zionism that has to do with the displacement of an indigenous population by force.

• 2:00:30Speaker 05

  Because you believe God wanted you here. That's one way to look at it. And that, my friend, is just run of the mill imperialism. It's basic. Then there's the Zionism that says, like I said, I am preserving my culture. And then there's the Zionism that says, I am longing for a place for us to belong. A Zionism that is much more an idea of a promised land rather than the hostile takeover of a place where people already exist.

• 2:01:11Speaker 05

  Spiritual, religious, political. All of that in this one term. So I am not going to tell you what to think of when you say Zionist. Just like I don't know what to tell you what you think of when you say Christian. But I tell you what, it ain't what the rosters mean.

• 2:01:31Speaker 05

  And I tell you what, if you sitting in Palestine right now, do it even matter? Hood Politics.

• 2:01:52Speaker 05

  All right, now don't you hit stop on this pod. You better listen to these credits. I need you to finish this thing so I can get the download numbers. Okay? So don't stop it yet. But listen, this was recorded in East Los Boil Heights by your boy Propaganda. Tap in with me at prophiphop.com. If you're into cold brew coffee, we got Terraform Cold Brew. You can go there, dot com and use promo code hood. Get 20% off, get yourself some coffee. This was mixed, edited and mastered by your boy Matt Alsowski, killing the beat softly. Check out his website, mattalsowski.com. I'm gonna spell it for you because I know.

• 2:02:33Speaker 05

  M A T T O S O W S K I dot com. mattalsowski.com. He got more music and stuff like that on there. So go and check out The Heat. Hood Politics is a member of Cool Zone Media. Executive produced by Sophie Lickterman, part of the iHeart Media Podcast Network. Your theme music and scoring is also by the one and only Matt Alsowski, still killing the beat softly. So listen, don't let nobody lie to you. If you understand urban living, you understand politics. These people is not smarter than you. We'll see y'all next week.

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