Name another podcast like this. Check it, ah, check it, check it, check it. It's the unique house that's your boy, E.C.E.O. And I'm here with the lovely, amazing official, Mr. Mako, what's going on? And that my dad walk on. Man, hey man, we got our guy here today, family in the building today. I feel real good about it, man. This guy right here, man. Like I said, when we first started early on, man, there was a few people that God put in our life, man. And this guy right here was one of them, man. Every time I pick up the phone and call him, he always answered. If I text him, he gonna answer that text. He a real one, man. We down here in Houston, my guy B Banks just stepped in the building. What's up with it, man? We y'all. How y'all doing? Thank you so much for coming to sit with us, man. We just appreciate the love, man. Are you in the town? You know that? Yeah, man. Come on, I gotta be real. Because we sit behind these microphones, man. And we get opportunities to sit and talk with different individuals. And that's a blessing just to be able to sit down with true, genuine people. You know what I mean? And there's a lot of them that we sit with. We don't feel that energy. But if you wanted those guys that, from the day that I met you, I felt like if I called you, you'd be there. So I don't know if that's real. I've never had to call you. But I feel like if I called you. Oh, yeah, I'm coming. Oh, then you're gonna come see me, man. We love you, man. See about me. I appreciate you for giving me that, you know? No, for sure.  One night we was at the store, right? And it was camp. Camp was at the store. And for some reason, after camp, we had did his listening session at our store. And camp, I looked on my thing and he was like, tell that chick I'm coming. And he was running and he was just having a good time with that song. And I felt so good because I knew I was connected to camp and I was connected to you, man. So that was dope, man. You're not shy of the camp.  So you really, you know him?  I actually met, I didn't like, like I met him at the studio in Dallas. Really? Okay. Like a couple of years ago. He was working on something with somebody else. And he had hit me up. He was like, hey, bro, man, that song till that chick will come in and make me feel different. And then ever since then, we've just been going back and forth.  So. He's very talented. Yeah, he is. He's very talented, man. Like, there's certain people that when you see and you know like that song he got with the Pooja, all of the Pooja members except for Lauren. He, you know, he like that was dope to see him put that together. So, and you see him do different stuff. But to see y'all connected, like I said, and I respect both of y'all the utmost. It was like, dang man, I'm just glad that I'm, you know, I know these brothers, man. So that was dope for me. And he was like, man, when I looked, I didn't expect to see that because I didn't know y'all knew each other. You gotta see where I'm coming from. Oh no, no, no. I didn't even know that.  Well, before he dropped it, we're doing that record with the Poojas. He told me he was gonna do that. Wow. Yeah, and I told him, that's a good look. Man, man. Shout out to Kim. Yeah, man, and last time, you know, for me, the elephant is in the room is, you know, the last time it was Chucky Trio had passed away and you had came on the day after that it happened, we sit down together and y'all had music together.   Actually, it's one year over the next year. So we still, you know, we keep his name alive. Y'all already know, that was my boy. You know, he was a real, he was another real one. So, you know, it's a piece of Chucky. Man, no, no, no. What can we look forward to coming from you? I know you got a new project coming up. All right, now I'm working on, it's almost finished, it's called Lottery Doll. It's my new tape, I'm finna get ready to drop it. I just dropped my new single. It's called Bottom, it's going crazy. Finna get ready to shoot the video for that. So, yeah, you already know. Ba-dum! Ba-dum, yeah. Man, I can't wait. What all is in Lottery Doll, why that name? What's up with that song? Okay, you know, the Lottery, what's the Lottery? You know what I'm saying? You feel like that's the grand prize or that's the one. So, you know what I'm saying? I'm the one, I feel like I'm the one. I feel like I'm the big tiki. And you know, you want to be number one in a, or whatever you're doing.  And then plus I feel like I'm a underdog as well. So, Lottery Doll makes sense to me. I got you, I got you. Wow, I just think that that name, it's going to draw attention. Mm-hmm. You know, it's certain things when you do them, it's going to pull you in.  We got them right where we want them, you know what I'm saying? How important it is to have the right name for the songs? Um, I think it's 70, 30. Because, you know, you got to have something to draw people in. So, they're like, okay, okay, uh, but here. Oh, what's this about? You see what I'm saying? So, I think it's important for the artist. You want to keep the people drawing them in and then keep your music, keeping them. So, it's important. Wow. Hey man, you know, when you see the show going where it's been going, man, God, I know you've been watching us. Oh, yeah. What do you be thinking?  To be honest, I don't really think nothing. You know what? Because when I first seen y'all and met y'all and felt y'all energy, I said it to myself, I told y'all, I told my brother, Trillie, I say, they finna go. Cause y'all like, when you do your interviews, it's genuine, it's what you want, feels what you want to tell them. I say, they finna go. So, I ain't feel nothing. I was like, yeah, they gone. Yeah. Thank you so much, man. Keep going.  Like I said, we love to sit with genuine people, man. We love the fact, like when we called y'all that time, we didn't know nobody. I'm being real with you.  And then when I called, you said, I bring Trillie Polk and I was like, bring him, man. You remember I called you, I said, yeah, bring him. I said, and then for y'all to just come like that, man, like everybody don't do that, man. I know you think probably a lot of people do it. Now they fly in because the numbers is looking better. But I'm telling you, at first people weren't coming like that. And now some of those same people are wanting to come to be honest with Trillie. Because, you know, me being honest, I don't really, I do interview, but not really. So, you know, so I feel some of them, I'm like, okay, I see it, I just see what y'all doing. Let me go and shoot like that. That's crazy, man. Like a lot of people didn't. You know, I'm being real. Like a lot of people didn't. It was, I got so many stories, man, it's crazy. But it's just like I said, it was certain people that turned their backs when we got to doing it. People that was popular, that mess with me before I started the show, stop checking in and even coming by the store after I started the show. Well, you know how that goes, man. I didn't get it. I didn't get it, man. But at the end of the day, I didn't care about that. I just wanted to make sure that we was able to touch different people, right? Like, I may bring up an episode like when Woody Two Live was on there with the guy that guy killed after he left our show. You know, it's stuff like that, you know? And I got to tell him about God somewhat. We had a conversation. And the guy that was standing behind him on the show ended up killing him at the club. The same guy that he was asking me to put on the show. So what I'm saying is, there is a purpose behind these microphones in dealing with different people, whether it be young, whether it be old, you get an opportunity to speak to somebody. We sometimes take life for granted, man. And we just don't know when or where things are gonna transpire. So I think we need to take every opportunity to show love to the people that we can, you know, get in front of. So thank you for coming on the show. I don't know, anytime, man. Y'all call me, y'all, all the way in Alaska. Man. How important you think it is being an artist to make appearances on podcasts? Because, you know, to me, podcast is a new radio station. People are not going to radio stations as much as they used to. They go to the bloggers, the podcast, to do their interviews. I think it's very important.  Get to see you, get to hear your stories. I think it's very important. You know, y'all play a big role in people's careers. So we appreciate all the podcasts. Man, definitely appreciate you, man. So Houston, man, we hungry tonight, man. Where can we go? Like, if we wanted to get us a good meal, man. What kind of meal you want? You want that hood meal? Man, that hood meal. That's always the best meal. Oh, yeah, Timmy Chan. It's your wing, doesn't it?  Hey, laugh. What's wrong with Timmy Chan? Timmy Chan. Timmy Chan. That's why I need to be there. That's why we want that good wing, then whatever, and hey, sit down. They got the best wings. Oh, yeah, I'm butting your shirt, though, because you know, we don't talk too much. They got some good fries? Oh, yeah, I'm good fries. I bought the shrimp fried rice, though, you know. With the butter biscuits, you know. Hey, man, stop it, man. Get a hold, girl, get a hold of that. Yeah, oh, yeah. Man, so what do you expect in this second quarter coming up? Is that project going to come out the second quarter? Because we in the second quarter right now. Are you about to get ready to go into the second quarter? Actually, it's gonna drop in the beginning of April. OK, that'll be the second quarter. Second quarter, at the end of April. And I'm gonna drop that. And I got some other stuff I'm working on. I got a new heart is up for the brain, too. Well, really? I'm proud of that. I love that, because at the end of the day, I think of... Male or female? Female. I just be thinking people don't really just be working with people, you know what I mean? Yeah, she young, too. Rap or sing? She rap. She young, too. She hard? She hard. Young, too. Hard. Well, you know already you're gonna bring on Boss Talk whenever you say that. Oh, yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, you gotta play it. Now you gotta sit back and just let her do her thing. Oh, yeah. That's dope right there. I love it, man. So when are you gonna introduce her to the public? Um, it's coming. It's gonna pop up. It's like... Y'all gonna be like, ooh. Y'all in the studio and everything? Yeah, we working. We working. Man, that's dope, man. And she disciplined. Oh, yo, listen. Listen. That's the main part. Oh, no, it really is. She, like, working with different, you know, some people got different egos, they don't listen. They listen. How did you find her?  And she from here in Houston? In Houston. Okay. Yeah. She actually, her artist name is Bre Banks. Okay. Yeah. I don't know for real. Bre Banks. And that was her name before she met you?  So you already know. So it was meant? Yeah, it was meant. So, yeah. Man, that's going to be dope, bro. So is it something that you are taken under your wings now to start signing or to start having artists? Yeah, yeah.  So that's one of the artists, female artist, she's 13. She's young. Yeah. 13. She's cold. So. Do you sign these artists? Yeah. So you are signing them? Yeah. Just want to make sure, because you have a lot of people who take these artists and it's just like a verbal, oh, yeah, I'm going to help you, I'm going this, that, whatever right now. Oh, no, no, no, no. When they blow, they like. Oh, no. It's, you know, it really is just me. First of all, I was like, you know, I make sure that all these that I'm working with is genuine. Right. They want to learn, listen, not doing all that, you know, we handle that, but everything going to be right. Okay. Cool.  You know, talk to you. We hadn't talked to you since you left, uh, since left us too.  And I can't wait till the next project come out. I know you're going to come up to Dallas and share it with us. I'd like to do a listening session in there for you. Bring it out. You know what I'm saying? Oh, yeah. Give them a little skin of what's going to come. We can do something. You see what I'm saying? And when is the video being shot? Um, when I come back from South by Southwest. Okay. How are you going down there? Are you performing down there? Yeah. I got a little something. Yeah. That thing going to be lit down there. I'm just going down there. You know. Are you getting your artists to perform? Oh, no, no, no. Not yet. Not yet. Now, you're still working on that, but, uh, trust me, y'all going to love her. I know it. Who can you compare her to? Herself. She got her own. Her own lane. I feel like the thing she's rapping about like her cadence is her. It's her. So we're going to keep it like that. Okay. That's good.  Oh, she's the young such and such. Or he's the young. She's the young brief banks who she's supposed to be. Wow. That's so dope, man. Like I said, I can't wait to see everything transpire. Um, like I said, if it's anything we can do, we definitely want to try it. You know, help or be there for you for anything. If you got something happening in H town and you like, Hey man, let me call you. Tell them what we got going down. I'm pulling up. I appreciate you. I definitely appreciate you, man. Hey, man. We love you brother. I love y'all too. Man, listen, man, like I said, we just don't happen all the time. Like I said, we came in this game and we really didn't know what was going to happen. I did know that I got the gift to go. Like you can't get over in that seat and I'm prayed and I know you for the seat there.  It's more about helping others like people can see your story. It might be another cat out there who been doing music and he don't know it, but he need to help somebody. I've talked to guys who they don't, they ain't going to bring nobody else in the umbrella or even mess with them. But for you to even do that, that's a dope move, man. We got to bridge gaps. We got to bring the youth up. I was just talking to a little Kiki while ago and we was talking about that. You know what I mean? I just feel like you got to bring people up and help people because at the end of the day you'll give. You know what I mean? It has made room for you. So we got to help the others who need to help. And you know you gift it. You've done this thing forever now. Let's get the other ones in. You know what I mean? Open doors for everybody. Open doors, man. So thank you, man, for coming on Boss Talk 101. I don't want to show you any time. Y'all call me at three in the morning. Hey, we'll crank this thing up. We've done it, right? Same, man. Thank you for coming on Boss Talk 101, man. It's been another great segment of Boss Talk 101 where the bosses talk. And we out. Yes, sir.


Hello, hello, hello. I'm Meryl Khalili. We are DM25, a radical political movement for Europe, and today we're looking at the situation in the Middle East and the information war that's running in parallel with it. My guest is Lucas Fabraro, who's also my colleague at DM25. He's our communications director, and he's been on the front lines of this information war, and hopefully we're going to be exploring this issue to understand a lot more about what are the dynamics out there, what could be different this time compared to other times that Israel-Palestine has exploded in the past, and let's take it to it. Lucas. Hey, Meryl. Thanks. Tell me something. I mean, why don't we kick it off like this? Why do you think it's important what's happening online for people that are watching who are like, well, who cares what's said on Twitter or Facebook? There are people dying out there. Why is it critical to the outcome of this conflict? What's important about it? I think it's saying that what happens on social media doesn't matter. It's on the same level as saying that what happens on TV or on newspapers don't matter. So if you put it that way, it doesn't take very long to see the insanity of what it means to say that what happens on social media doesn't matter. So many people, billions of people, obviously, are active on social media. Everybody knows that. I think what some people often don't realize is that for a lot of people, that's pretty much their only contact with politics, with political information. They don't read newspapers. They don't consume mainstream media really very much in general. Obviously, they don't trust politicians. They don't particularly care what they say or don't say. And also, on a personal capacity, I think very often they just don't talk about politics, even in person with family or friends, all that awesome. So really, social media is the only way in, especially for younger people. So I think it's a grave, terrible mistake that a few people make these days with some silly due to disregard social media or a particular social media vehicle, because sometimes DNA modesty is not towards social media in general, but it's towards the latest social media thing. Twitter is fine. It's respectable. It's academic, but TikTok is for kids. It's for little dances and trends. It's not for serious political conversations. People say the same about Twitter. When Twitter came along, it seemed like a ridiculous idea to reduce this course to that length of a character. I think it was 140 at first. I'm looking at a stat here, which says that about 25% of US adults under 30 now regularly get their news from TikTok, from Pew Research. If you've listened to this for the first time and you're not active on TikTok, that might sound terrifying to you because of the idea that people have about TikTok in their minds, but it really isn't. I spend a lot of time on TikTok. I've seen content, journalistic content made by amateurs, basically. They're also by profession journalists, but by and large by amateurs that are sometimes teenagers and they're much more well informed than, dare I say, making stream journalists themselves, especially in issues such as Israel-Palestine. I think in general, I don't have the same concerns that most people might have about this, but not only that, I welcome it because think about Israel-Palestine, for example, and I live in Germany. I have a very heightened perception of what's going on. Everybody does, but in Germany in particular, I think it's really scary what the general climate is when mainstream politics and mainstream media. Where would we be in Germany right now if it wasn't for social media? I have no idea. The mainstream media that lies through their teeth and basically just copies and paste Israel press releases as news without verifying anything, if they had a stranglehold on what information makes it to people, basically, which would be the case without social media. I welcome it. Of course, they are concerned about social media. We're not going to get into them, of the multi-policy control that is these corporations have. However, I think without social media right now would be in a much, much worse place. That's without even starting to talk about how it empowers people on the ground in Gaza themselves to send those images that we consume on a daily basis right now that's 99% of them CNN would never in a million years run them. What's been happening in the last couple of years has been eight weeks now, something like eight weeks since this has been going on now, the bombardment of Gaza. There's been a lot of protests every weekend and during the week across the world. I was listening to an interview with the Palestinian ambassador to the UK last night and what he was arguing was that if it hadn't been for so many people coming out of the streets, Israel would have wiped Gaza off the map by now. I wanted to get a sense from you about what role you think social media plays in actually mobilizing people and getting them out onto the streets for this cause. I think that the last thing that I said before you asked that question is the key to understanding this year, the images coming from Gaza, from the people being massacred right now, not the news channels that are covering it from inside Gaza. I mean, what that Western journalist is still even inside of Gaza, from Tel Aviv, but imagine that, what sort of, how their reporting is colored in a situation like this. I think I will leave the deep analysis for people smarter than me on these matters, but in my view, this has been really, maybe the key, the images that you see on social media, they are appalling. They're enraging. There's really no other term that you can use. And when people are enraged, that's the most powerful emotion I think that can drive you to the streets to protest, to actually mobilize even people who have never done that before in their lives. And I'm convinced that dozens, if not hundreds of thousands of people, have participated in protests for the first time in their lives in places like Europe, thanks to this crisis. And I think by and large, they have been mobilized by what they saw in consumer social media. I mean, as a counterpoint to that, look at the war in Ukraine, which started in February 2022, and was also a kind of modern war of the social media age, let's say. And there we also saw a lot of very, very brutal images on both sides. And yet the reaction here seems to be different. In the last eight weeks, the atmosphere is much more electric, much more nimble, much more responsive. And these images, as you've said, these awful images to see are kind of getting into people's minds and hearts a lot more than perhaps the ones that have been emerging from Ukraine since February 2022. I mean, tell me, what's your read on that? I think there are a few key differences, right? The first one is just to get that out of the way is just the geopolitical difference. In the case of Ukraine and Russia, Russia launched an illegal war, no matter what you think about our shared responsibility in the lead up to it, of which we have plenty as Western countries. But the invasion itself was a criminal act, of course. You're not supposed to do that in an international law. And they committed countless war crimes since they launched the invasion. But at the end of the day, it's still a conflict between two countries. It's a conventional war, so to speak, in that sense. And that's all we have in Gaza, of course. Gaza is not a state, it's an occupied territory. And so the level of the asymmetry of it, I think, has no comparison to the Ukraine Russia case. I think the other key difference is I don't think it's so much, of course, the how horrifying the images themselves are, I think play a part. Naturally, we've seen horrific images coming out of Ukraine as well, just massacres and civilians being targeted and all that. I think still the level of dehumanization that the Israeli government has for Palestinians and as a result, the acts that they are willing to perpetuate in Palestinians are almost unmatched in any other place in the world. So there's that, again, the asymmetry of it as well. But also I think a key difference is no one was cheering on Vladimir Putin in the West when Russia invaded Ukraine. We didn't arm Russia to do the invasion. We didn't continue to arm Russia after the invasion happened. Politicians were pretty much without exception in the West condemning the Russian invasion, expressing almost unlimited solidarity with Ukraine, arming Ukraine in order to resist this invasion and fight back. And the mainstream media was doing the same thing. I mean, in a lot of countries in the West, you can be walking down the street and you'll see Ukrainian flags hanging from government buildings. Do you see a Palestinian flag anywhere when you walk around London like from a public institution or Germany, not because of Germany or anything like that? So that's also the key difference and we must not forget our governments and our mainstream media are cheering this on. They're cheering on this massacre and this genocide. So I think that combined with the images that you see from said genocide, that just doubles the rage that people feel and compels them a lot more to go to the streets and to mobilize because there is actually something that is happening that must be stopped, which is the support from politicians and from our media to the Israeli government, which is not the case in Russia, obviously. Well, would you say that this is really a split between the people and the elites in the West when it comes to opinion on this war? Yes, absolutely. Take Germany, for example. Germany looking at it from the outside and even from the inside, for I think most people, it seems that the vast majority of the population has this unwavering commitment to the Israeli government and whatever it does. If you look at polls, that's absolutely not the case. So what's going on? Well, what's going on is that the people in power are in unison, just rabbit supporters of the Israeli government and all of its criminal policies. And so they create this political climate in which it becomes taboo. If you thought these people might be the majority or at the very least certainly the other people, the people who support Israel and critically are not the majority, it makes them afraid to speak out. It's really as simple as that. So it's this climate of making a certain position taboo and silencing people that way. So in that sense, there's a very clear split, of course, between the people in power, the politicians and the mainstream institutions, and the people at large. I'd like to dig into the information war part of it a little bit more. A couple of weeks ago, we had a live stream and I asked you a question about whether you thought Israel was losing the information war. And you said yes. And I'd like to explore a little bit now about why you think that's the case and what may be different this time compared to other times when the Israel-Palestine has exploded as it has sadly happened so often.  I always thought Israel was a master of information warfare. I can remember in 20, I think it was 2009, there was this tool that was, I hope I'm not misremembering it, but a tool called, I think it was called megaphone. And you would sign up to it. And this was put out by the Israeli government or a group that was close to the Israeli government with their sanction. You signed up to it. And whenever there was anything anywhere that was negative about Israel, any blog posts or new media article, something like that, you would get a little alert in your tray and a message that you could copy and paste so that you could go to that website, the blog that had the offensive, the finger against Israel or the combat against Israel and write your own comment. So I mean, this was before like bot armies and all of that, but I just, I looked at them. I thought, wow, that is the next level stuff. Really. I mean, they really raised the bar for what smart information warfare can be. If you can, if you can look at it like that, I mean, tactically, it made a lot of sense, well, ethically, perhaps not. So I want to understand what you think has gone wrong this time and how perhaps the Israeli state and its supporters have been caught unawares. And what are the dynamics that are creating essentially an enormous amount of pushback for Israel that you think is causing them to lose this information war? What's different? Well, I think the key difference, the wills have come off on the propaganda. It's gotten bad, like real bad, comically comedy sketch level bad. I think that's the key difference here. So the question then is, how have we gotten here, right? This country that you mentioned that used to be so good at propaganda that you had to come up with a term just for the particular type of brand of propaganda, a country that had a PR operation that was so good, so state of the arts that the state itself, in large part, owes its existence to the competency of this beautiful PR propaganda that was done from the 1920s and 1930s. So what happened? I don't know. However, I was reading something recently, I think I just don't do it, I can't remember who wrote it, but sort of analyzing it and their argument was that basically they got lazy, much like the IDF on a military level got complacent and so got caught unawares by this Hamas attack and took a very long time to sort of even get them out of the territory and get them back to Gaza. Much like that happened in military terms, I think in propaganda terms, it was the same thing. They got complacent and so this devious sort of misinformation that Israel is so well known for having mastered has become this sort of cartoonish, very teach type of propaganda. To see that an army spokesperson point to a calendar with the names of the week in Arabic and saying that there are names of territories. I mean, I have, I've tried to visualize what chain of events led to this happening, like what was said before they hit record for them to just think that that would be okay and you just can't. And I think, look, Israeli propaganda is directed towards the West, 99% of it. So I think that the fact that they've gotten so lazy is an indictment on us because if this is meant for the West to consume and it's so blatant how fabricated it is, that means that the Israeli government thinks we're all a bunch of idiots and you would think that mainstream politicians and media would take offense with that at some point. The problem is a lot of these mainstream politicians and mainstream journalists, well, they're idiots to put it, to put it clearly. So they don't take offense, they continue to copy and paste it as if it was just standard news that was verified in proper journalism. So I think we should understand that as well, that it's an indictment on our leaders, on the people in power in the West that Israeli propaganda has gotten so cartoonishly bad. And I think it's also a sign of the political climate inside of Israel and how so far right it was always much more to the right than your regular country. But right now, it's just so far to the right that there's no other real brand of propaganda that would even fit. So that's kind of like it's the only thing that you could hope to have coming out of a government that has people in power like Israel has. Well, that was what I was going to say, because the fact that it's a far right government now, the most far right government in Israel's history, the whole thing becomes more like an ideological crusade for them rather than a political and a strategic question. So maybe that's why they've kind of taken their foot off the gas. They believe that they're so firmly in the right that they don't really need to try. And perhaps that's why the propaganda competence is falling behind. But I'd like to put a bit of flesh on this. Can you give me some examples? You mentioned now this calendar. I mean, tell us about the Al-Shifa Hospital case and why that backfired on Israel. Well, I think it's hard to say for sure. But I think that even Western media has its limits sometimes. You saw that, for example, when the Jabalia refugee camp was bombed for the first time, I think it's bombed multiple times since then. But for the first time when it killed hundreds of civilians, there was this now infamous clip of an Israeli spokesperson going on a CNN and talking to Wolf Blitzer. Wolf Blitzer, you know, a seasoned supporter of Israel. And even he was shocked at the sort of how at the nonchalant tone of the spokesperson just basically saying, like, yeah, that's a tragedy of war. You know, that was the Hamas commander. So we were just a moment away, a period. And he was just giving him every opportunity to just walk back from the statement and saying something that would cover the backs a little bit better. And he just wouldn't take it. So I think even Western media sometimes, fortunately, has its limits. Not all Western media don't, unfortunately, because this case that you mentioned with the Al-Shifa Hospital, yes, the BBC question Israeli claims, as in many Western news outlets. However, the biggest newspaper in Germany said simply copied and pasted the Israeli press release that they found Hamas Command Center underneath the hospital. So it doesn't, it doesn't happen everywhere. You know, I think we notice when it backfires, just because, you know, it's always good to see that this sort of wall Israeli propaganda that's reproduced by Western media can be breached sometimes. But let us not forget that there are still plenty of very, very high profile news outlets out there that are still just taking every single bait. What do you think of the data points that might suggest that Israel is losing the information war? I mean, you mentioned a couple of specific instances and people like Wolf Blitzer, who I believe was involved with APAC. I mean, this is no regular CNN anchor, even him explaining, you know, we're exclaiming horror when faced with a rather amateurish idea of spokesperson about what Israel had done. So why do you get that sense? Maybe we can also shift to looking at at TikTok as well, where I believe there are a lot more people that are pushing the Palestinian position than the Israel one. I think one of the main data points that people took notice of, and I can't remember the exact numbers now, but it was looking at hashtags on TikTok and their popularity. So pro-Palestine hashtags such as free Palestine compared to pro-Israel hashtags, I think stand with us being the main one if I'm not mistaken. So they look at the popularity of them and where they ranked. And I think the pro-Palestine ones were something like 80% more popular than the Israeli ones, essentially the pro-Israel ones. And I think that just basically proves what Korsriglans at the platform like TikTok. Of course, you have to be aware that if you were, for example, pro-Palestine, you consume a lot of pro-Palestine content like I do, then you put into this bubble where the algorithm only feeds you similar content. But again, we have hard data that says that actually this is taking place. We also have information that the Israeli government is panicking about this. And institutions that do Israel, the Israeli government's bidding like the Anti-Defamation League in the US. Is that their name? The Anti-Defamation League? Yeah, ADL. Yes. They're panicking about it. There was a leak from an internal meeting that I saw the other day on Twitter of their president or whatever, just basically losing his mind over how bad they were losing the information while on TikTok saying that they have a very, very big problem with younger people. So they're panicking about it. The Israeli lobby is talking directly to TikTok. There was this very amusing headline, I think from Vice recently, where essentially when TikTok CEO says, we're not doing anything, young people just don't like you, to the Israeli government. And you can see that. I don't have to mention something that has also related to TikTok, but not to go on a slide tangent here, but just because I think I know that you're going to love this. In a lot of the contents that I started noticing that in the content that I posted about Israel Palestine, the pro-Palestine content, of course, a lot of people will comment on the content of the video, but a lot of people would just comment to boost the post and to get the engagement up so that the algorithm feeds it to other people. And then I started noticing recently that I would post a video and then I would start seeing comments like, oh, lovely hotel, thanks for the tip. Oh, that's a great hair routine. I can't find this product, though. Would this be a good replacement?  And then it turns out that people, because TikTok itself, as you can imagine, they don't necessarily want to push for Palestine content either, especially as they're facing the threat of being banned in the U.S. And some people are getting shadow banned or just outright banned for posting pro-Palestine content. So TikTok is not covering itself in glory. It's the people using TikTok that we should be praising. And so to try to dodge that, people started posting comments on pro-Palestine videos as if they were commenting on a travel blog video. And to try to avoid any keywords that TikTok might have flagged in order to shadow ban videos, not only words that were said in the video itself, but also in the comments. Because if you see a lot of free Palestine in the comments, maybe the video is going to be dark because of that. So people are just commenting random travel blog stuff to help push the video with the algorithms. So on one hand, TikTok is facing accusations that it's promoting pro-Palestine content. And the head of the ADL is freaking out about what people see as an imbalance. And on the other, they're shadow banning people who post pro-Palestine content. How does that work? Well, the TikTok is not... I don't think even the Israeli government or the ADL or any of these people, they seriously think that TikTok has an agenda here to actively push pro-Palestine content. They say it because they know that that's going to play in the media. And it's going to help put pressure on TikTok to do exactly what TikTok does often, which is to actually censor pro-Palestine content. I've had videos that were taken down in my personal account, although in those cases, they were reported by people, trolls, essentially. They are trying to silence these videos that went viral. And then I appeal and TikTok restored them. But I've heard countless people say that they either had their accounts banned or shadow ban.  Okay. I want to ask about anti-Semitism and the accusation of anti-Semitism as a cover for political disagreement. I mean, we live in a strange time, especially in the last five or six years, very strong social justice movement. And we've seen accusations of bigotry used to shut down debate in all kinds of areas. It doesn't mean there isn't real bigotry out there. And I'm certainly not trying to minimize the very real consequences of anti-Semitism. And yet, the sense I'm getting is that, I mean, when I go on my timeline, for example, it doesn't take long for disagreement to spiral into, well, you'll just be anti-Semitic by claiming that Israel was doing this, et cetera. And then that's the end of the discussion. It's shut down. My sense is, though, that this accusation, when used as a political weapon, is losing its teeth. Tell me what your sense is on that. Obviously, these accusations of this blanket accusations of anti-Semitism when you criticize the state of Israel and its government have been weaponized for a very long time. As a matter of fact, it was part of this brilliant PR operation that we were talking about that has been at the core of Israel policy since its inception, essentially, and before that with the Zionist movement. I think it's, well, just the scale and the nonchalant way in which Israel deals with its crimes and the evidence, the hard evidence that we have of those crimes have been part of this decoupling of the anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism in people's minds, because I think people who even used to equate these things are now not that pro-Israel anymore, because they're seeing the evidence that this is a government that is criminal, that it oppresses and massacres people. But I think also just the levels of sheer absurdity that the people who weaponized this term have taken into, like for instance, the case this year in Berlin of Jewish people being arrested for taking place in pro-Palestine protests, the case of disorganization, the Jewish voice for just peace in the Middle East, that they hosted this event at a cultural center here in Berlin called Oyun. I was there. It was a beautiful event. We talked about peace. We saw Jewish people stand side by side with Muslim-era Palestinian people talking about true lasting peace, refusing to live in hatred and in the suspicion of one another. It was beautiful. It was in other words exactly what we need in times like these. What is the rewards and that disorganization and the cultural center that hosted it gets from the city's government? They want to close the cultural center basically by cutting the public funding that they're committed to providing until the end of 2025, by the way. They just cut it. So you see who can see the absurdity of a case such as this. The city government is trying to tell a Jewish organization that they're not allowed to host an event for their anniversary. And if they do, they're going to shut down the cultural center that hosted them. The case of Edith Effetts as well, which is a member of Jewish Voice, who was one of these people who were arrested at protests. In one case, it was a lone protest in which you just held a presciency as an Israeli Jew, stopped the genocide in Gaza. So when you start seeing cases like these, then you really like they're doing your work for you basically and then trying to expose the absurdity of weaponizing this term, which is a travesty and a disservice to Jewish people first and foremost. Because anti-Semitism, of course, is real, is a real thing, is a real problem. It's especially pervasive in the far right in Europe. The same far right that is now praised for taking part in pro-Israel marches, such as Martin Le Pen, after spending decades spreading just despicable anti-Semitism. But that's how it goes in Europe these days. If you just pledge your allegiance to the state of Israel and its government and its policies, then all is forgiven. Something else I wanted to ask you is to take a little path here a little bit is about Twitter. Elon Musk bought Twitter. God, I can't even remember that. It was like a year and a half ago or two years ago, October 2020, I think. October 2020, three. 2022. Yeah, sorry, so one year ago. Before Musk bought Twitter, the U.S. intelligence and security agencies, the U.S. political establishment, were very close to Twitter. A lot of evidence has come out since then, which has convinced me that they were able to get content either outright censored or shadow banned or laid down in order to manipulate and put their thumb on the scale a little bit of public discourse, which had a very profound effect on issues. Back then, it was issues around COVID and vaccines, and then later the war in Ukraine, etc. So do you think that there's a case to be made that since Musk bought Twitter, Musk himself proclaimed free speech absolutist for all his faults, and we have many disagreements with Musk. Do you think that there's a case to be made that a lot of this, the kinds of images we've been seeing, a lot of the kind of debate that we've been commenting on in this call now, wouldn't have come out under the old Twitter regime? No, to be honest, because these things are still getting out on places like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, these images are still all over, which of course is not to say that they're not repressing them in a lot of cases.  Sometimes I will see an image on a place like Instagram, like a video of the aftermath of an Israeli Ashraq or something like that, and I am shocked first and foremost at the images naturally, but I'm also shocked that I'm seeing this on Instagram. How did they allow this content? Sometimes it doesn't even have like a graphic content warning. It's not an invitation to start banning this content if anyone from Instagram is watching this. I think it's great that you can see it there. But you know, this is Instagram, this is Method, this is Mark Zuckerberg, this is someone else that is very close ties with the political establishment in the US, and it has proven very willing to censor content in the past, just as the old regime with Twitter was. So you never know, but I don't have the feeling that things would be all that different had Musk not bought Twitter. As a matter of fact, just due to information as well, Musk was meeting with the Israeli president yesterday and saying despicable things about Gaza and the war. So I don't have any particular trust in this person when it comes to this conflict and moderation content on it. That's true. And I think he said that because he got into a bit of hot water for a tweet he made which could be construed as anti-Semitic a couple of weeks earlier. So he's kind of all over the shop with that. But let me put it back on that a little bit though because on one hand, yes, this information is on Instagram and Facebook and so on, but on the other, the political elites and journalists opinion makers, they are on Twitter. So they might not necessarily be going to Instagram and Facebook to look for that content. And also I recall that back in the day, Zuckerberg and other platforms as well were meeting with the US security establishment and Biden's team and so on to suppress or censor content. Maybe the only reason they're not doing it now and that you can see images without graphic warnings are the type you describe is because they know that the public, they might have to enter in one window and Instagram and the other and be like, what the hell? This is like two different worlds and they're kind of forced to show that stuff. I don't know. So I'm not sure that we can say that it's exactly the same situation despite the fact that Musk bought Twitter, but I don't know, tell me.  I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that there would be zero difference. I'm just saying that he wouldn't particularly, I don't think it would be a game-changing difference, like I guess what I'm trying to say, because yes, and Musk in some respects, he has been less strict with his policing of content than the old regime of Twitter was, which by the way, I have nothing, no good things to say about and the type of collusion that they had with US intelligence agencies and all that. I'm just saying that I don't really see the difference being that significant. I guess what I'm trying to say, as far as mainstream journalists are concerned as well, I don't know. They get information, the Western ones, they get information mostly straight from the Israeli government.  But they're not that should try to get any news that they're going to seriously report on. We take it. Okay, so as we come to a close on this, I'd like to look forward and see where do you see things going now in terms of these social media dynamics, in terms of how they're impacting statements from leaders and actually the political discussion in those circles where decisions are made that could really impact things on the ground? Well, I'm not going to try to make any predictions because, you know, it's usually fair when you try to do those, when it comes to Israel Palestine. However, you do get a sense that this is a whenever going to go back to how the world was in relation to this situation before October this year, I think things are going to be permanently changed. And my hope in my sense as well is that they will be changed in the sense that a pro-Palestine sentiment for a resolution that would bring freedom in Palestine to all people, for Israeli Jewish people, for Palestinians, everyone who lives in Palestine essentially and whose homeland is Palestine. My hope is that this whole situation, despite of and because of the tragedy that triggered it, will bring us closer to this to the solution. I also think that it's important for people never to underestimate the power of Western public opinion on this on this issue, especially in the US, but also very much in Europe. The minute we get a critical mass in public opinion in our countries, in Western countries, I think it's game over for the Israeli government's apartheid. It's game over for their occupation. It's game over for this 75 year long, even longer injustice that we see going on in Palestine. We need to make them pariahs as they deserve it should be. And I think the only way we do that is by influencing public opinion in the West because it's the West that backs the perpetuation of the system of oppression in Palestine. So do not underestimate the power of posting essentially, post, post away, post all the time, post about Palestine, post in defense of the Palestinian people, post about the climate of repression that is going on in your countries. If you try to say something that was pro-Palestine in class in school and you got silence, post about it, do that. It really does make a difference if not right now in the long term. And don't stop there naturally, mobilize, go out on the streets, try to influence things in other ways as well. But I think that in keeping with the theme of our discussion here, do not discount the power of social media. Well said. Well, thank you very much for that, Lucas. Lucas from Breiro, very interesting conversation. And yeah, good. Thank you. Thanks.


Today we're cooking up some lamb chops and not just any lamb chops We are cooking up some lamb loin chops or steaks And they are so tender and juicy and they're so cute. Take a look at these.  And they're so tender We're gonna season these up with some spices and some olive oil and garlic and lots of good stuff going on there And then we're gonna barbecue them on the grill now You really need to have an instant read thermometer like this to do this recipe really well Because this will make your life easier. You'll be very accurate and you won't overcook your lamb chops and that's important I'm rockin robin, and I'm gonna show you how to do it right after our chef joke All right, here's our first chef joke. Our second one will be a little bit later in the video So stay tuned for that. All right, what does sheep wear to the beach? A bikini Okay, so here's our ingredients. I have my lamb loin chops right here I have them in a dish so that we can marinate right here in the dish and I have some garlic I'm gonna use a little bit of dried oregano right over here some pepper olive oil some salt some fresh basil fresh rosemary and fresh parsley In here, I have some lemon zest now. I have a video on how I froze it So that's what this is is my leftovers. I'm gonna add that to it And I'll leave a link for that video in the description You can check it out and some lemon juice that I also froze so it's thawing out right now So we're gonna use a little bit of that So we're gonna start with adding some olive oil to our bowl here This is our marinade bowl and you're gonna add kind of no quarter about a quarter of a cup or so maybe a third You want to have enough to marinate all those Chops which is about two pounds worth To that I'm gonna add a little bit of oregano And you can get all the ingredients down in the description of this video. I'm gonna add the garlic to this By using my garlic press and we're gonna press all the garlic in here add the lemon juice to this And I'll toss in that lemon zest This will be about Close to you know what one lemon would give you use organic if you can I'm gonna add a bit of salt to this And some pepper we'll crack in some pepper there And now we're gonna add some of our fresh rosemary if you don't have Fresh you can certainly use dried, but fresh is way better in my opinion So you just want to pull those little petals off Just like that and you always use a little bit more fresh than you do dried Dried is a little more powerful a little more concentrated and we'll chop that up Once the rosemary is finely chopped like this, then we'll just add that to the bowl So next is our basil. I'm just taking the leaves stacking them up on top of each other like this It just makes it easier to cut up and then you roll it like a little cigar or whatever and Chop away. I Find I like to use a lot of basil. It just never seems to overpower And then I'll just toss that in And last but not least is our fresh parsley. So I'm just gonna shave off a few leaves like that There's a bad one. Of course, you don't want all the stems so you can get rid of some of the big stems Chop that up And toss that right into the bowl give it a stir And then we're gonna brush this over Over the chops now, we'll just take our brush and we're gonna just brush this right over the top look at that And we're like I said earlier, we're gonna let this marinate for one at least one hour I'll cover it put it in the fridge and Then we'll go head out to the barbecue grill and grill these up now you want to turn these over and Certainly want to do both sides And I did want to mention That I didn't show you because I want to salt these On the second side just a little bit more because what I put in the sauce in the marinade wasn't enough salt So give them a little more if you want to put a little more pepper you can too Okay, and then I'll finish marinating the second side and I'll cover it with some saran wrap before I put it in the fridge So you want to pre-heat your grill to a medium-high and just place those chops right on there And you want to cook these until an internal temperature of 135 Please don't overcook them. You want them to be nice and tender And I will check them in about five minutes It's been about five minutes. So let's check and see how these are doing Look at those nice grill marks So we'll go ahead and check the internal temperature on these in about five minutes with the instant read thermometer All right, I think we're all done here. Let's check the temperature and take these off if it's good Uh, don't these look wonderful. All right, they're done 10 minutes on the grill. It's all it took You don't want to overcook them make sure you use your instant read thermometer All right, I'm going to cut into one of these here and take a bite Nice and tender Smells amazing These are so delicious.  You'll love it. Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed the video Let me know by smashing the like button and if you'd like to chat leave me a comment down below All right, we'll see you next time. Take care


The Great Search, we're out here by Digikey and eight of your things Digikey every single week They did is our power of engineering to find the things you need on digikey.com Which is really handy now during this global parts Shortage, so we need to what are you searching for this week?  It's one of those products It's been strongly affected by the chip shortage because I think it uses either a free scale or STM chip Those chips aren't available and so the companies I consider paying, you know, five times the cost for the chips They've just temporarily discontinued the J-Link mini so they can focus on their other products So they said hey, what can I use instead? And so I gave them recommendation And then I was like, you know what it would make for a really good great search because I can also talk about Programmers and debuggers. So let's go to the computer. I'm gonna tell you a story okay, so We make a lot of boards with ARM Cortex chips, I really like the ARM Cortex series They're really great. And one thing that you'll notice is really common is they have What you know, you see on my screen here this little 2x5 headers SWD header The Raspberry Pi Pico that also came out has a 3-pin header They kind of simplified it because they want to have something low-cost But it's basically the ground power SWD and SWC and There's there's two Bodies of thought about how to program Cortex chips. One is you don't want to spend a lot You want to spend about 20-30 bucks? You can get a generic Simpsa stat board. These work with many open-source tools like open OCD I find Simpsa stat programers to be like if they work great they work great But the moment they don't work so great. It's a little bit of a nightmare You know, especially some chips like the nr 51 Really struggled with Simpsa stat programmers because of the way they multiplex the reset line in which case the the real answer is to go to using a J-Link and Did you key stocks all the J-Link? Programmers so, you know, I know they're not inexpensive, but if you are Spending any amount of time programming arm Cortex chips and really really really really really strongly recommend it especially if you're doing contract work Bill it it expense it. It's it's the intact adaptable. It's a it's working tool The J-Link base is is my go-to It supports, you know, there's it's for more upgradable It supports like pretty much every arm Cortex chip and then known universe And it has debugging and programming and it just manages all the weirdnesses like every chip is a little bit weird Like, you know, the Pico has two cores. For example The J-Link can can handle all of that There's also, you know, more expensive ones that do more they do emulation and stuff If you are a student, there's the edu Version which is less expensive. Although again, that's been like temporarily discontinued And what I had a lot of people I pointed a lot of people to Was the J-Link edu mini. So if you were a student Um, normally I'd be like this is my pick because it was like 20 25 dollars comes with a cable You know, it's very bare bones, but it it works like a dream. I love the J-Link mini again I don't use it because I'm not doing educational. I'm running a company Um, but for for students and beginners, it's you can't beat the price But like I said, it is affected by the chip shortage Sadly, so right now there's you can't even do a back order. Nobody knows when it's going to come back I hope I hope one day soon um But in the meantime, if you have something like the metro m4 like the samd series Again, you can use open ocd, but I I have found that it is very challenging and especially if you want to use um Atmel studio with debugging support So if you want to step debugging in a way that's really nice where you know, you could see um, and you know the visual studio like You know version of atmel studio where your code is and you can set break points and it's again graphical I know you can always use gdb, but uh, let's say you Um, you've been using gdb for more than half your life and you want a little bit of a break Um atmel studio is great recommended for samd chips and I will say, um You know as of this last I checked atmel studio does not support generic open ocd simsysdap uh Programmers or in any way that I found easy to do it only supports two things jlinks Which again, you have to either spend a significant amount because you or you have an edu mini Or they support the atmel ic e which i'm going to call the atmel ice Um, and the ic is in circuit emulator. It is atmel's tool. It is again only for atmel chips But it's really good. It supports aviars and samd's and it's it's never let me down You know, I mean it's like I've needed to program chips that chips are being freaky and weird They're not programming the fuses are like messed up. It always seems to kind of bring the chip to life Um, you know, yeah, I'd love the usb tini, but really the atmel ice is what I use. Um So, um, you know, yes, you know the jlinks are around I search for jlink, but uh Atmel and what's interesting is I was like, oh, you know, I was going to recommend the atmel ic e And I was a little worried because I was like, oh, I hope it's not too expensive But what's actually kind of cool is there is the atmel ic e basic which which I do kind of Recommends what I've got It's um this kind of large, you know, white cube thing and it even comes with um the cables And this is like about 130 bucks But if you're on a budget you want to save a couple dollars. I can recommend they also, um Oh, yeah, sorry, there's also the uh The ic e like fancy which comes with like a bunch of accessories But the pcba, which is just the the circuit board on the inside Is only like 80 dollars. I mean, it's it's cool because it's like really bare bones Um, and it's got the uh headers. It doesn't have a case. It doesn't have a cable um the micro usb cable or the sam the um swd cable, but it's a lot cheaper. It's eight dollars. I think is is, you know, it's like a fourth fifth the price of the um Jlink and again, if you're if you're pretty much using atmel chips aviars atmals I like there's also firmware upgradeable. It will always support every single aviar atmel chip like ever created on this planet And then uh, don't forget you will want the cable that goes from that to um this little two by five header uh Did you case tons of these in stock as well? So this is the uh two by five 1.27 millimeter Uh socket header cable and then, you know, we have a guide on how you can use it with atmel studio Um, you know, here you can see it is detected atmel studio um, you can select Any chip again back down to the 1890s um to the x megas Uh, you know in this case I have swd and you can um Uh, hold on I can I have to you know, I selected it it can uh Read the memory you can write the flash you can mess with fuses Um, and of course you can do step debugging. So I you know, it's um other than the jlink This is my go-to tool, especially since the jlink Um doesn't do aviars and the atmel i c e does so It's my product recommendation slash search Um, hopefully you'll you'll pick one of these up. I do I do find them to be quite handy. Um, and especially if you've struggled with um Simpsast app, I believe me a simpsast app board. They're great for 20 bucks Uh, this will save you many hours of frustration. That's a great church


Sculptor dwarf is a dwarf scuroidal galaxy. These are very common. They contain an old stellar population with large separations between stars. They are also devoid of gas and dust, so there is no new star formation. A team of astronomers use data from both the Hubble Space Telescope and the Gaia satellite to directly measure the 3D motions of individual stars in sculptor. Their results show that the galaxy's orbit is quite elongated. Currently at 290,000 light-years, Sculptor dwarf is near to its closest point to the Milky Way, but its orbit will take it as far out as 725,000 light-years.


Samoura now down to this near corner, surrounded by 3-1 shirts, but Anthony's picked out a cross. Pilling and stealing in his gemello! A score for the Tury, he's just five minutes into the second half. It is Bournemouth leading, oppressed by a goal to him. Well, it was down the left-hand side. It was the two youngsters who contrived the possibility. And the ball, he did do well. It's all about his first touch. Once he got a touch on it, he knew he had a tap in, but it took some doing, great finish. He's down on the halfway line, he's got a kick on the shin. And now Tury's a committed upfield, here's Johnson, right corner of the penalty area for Preston here. They haven't shot him down, comes back to the shot, come on!


States accompanied by his most eminent highness Andrew Barté his eminence John Cardinal O'Connor and Mr. J. Peter Grace ladies and gentlemen Welcome welcome to the 900th anniversary of the sovereign military order of Malta and the 62nd annual dinner of the American Association his eminence James Cardinal Hickey the Archbishop of Washington will now deliver the invocations following that I Request that you remain standing and join in the singing of our national anthem faith in America Has reflected and restored our own now a man Whose unswerving defense of the rights of the unborn has reminded all of the essential dignity and Sanctity of life itself and we were talking since pictures speak much louder than words and To commemorate this very special occasion. We have prepared a five-minute Visual tribute to our honoree, which we would like to show to you at this time Ethiopia I Want to say thank you For all the love and care you have given to our poor Through your gift of food each time I have knocked at your heart for help You are always full support My gratitude and that of our poor people is our prayer for you That through this love You have for others you may grow in holiness. I Am sure you will thank God with us for the two tabernacles We have given to Jesus in Moscow and in Armenia I always feel God uses us on Nothingness to show his greatness So pray for us That we not spoil God's work, but that we may continue with great love Let us pray God bless you mother Teresa Made that extraordinary film on mother Teresa. I'm sure you've seen it. Mr. President was shown in the White House That so many of us have a scene to take Mothers the warm clothing that she and her sister companion would need When I checked with Jan last week when she returned from Russia where she stayed about two and a half weeks with mother I asked because Jan didn't volunteer it. She wasn't very generous to me How did mother Teresa like her warm clothing?  President as you know more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of Now the scroll says that you and mrs. Reagan will enjoy the benefit of the monks prayers day after day through your lives and forever Prayers that you will both be with our Lord forever. And that's where we want you to be When the time comes with our Lord forever This is the kind of a gift mr. President that I want to get when I retire because I will need them a lot more than you Going back to that beautiful film Everybody here has a copy of that film at each of your places So that we can all remind ourselves of how great our president is Also at your place is a wonderful book that was put out last week called grinning with the gepper Humor is the best balancing force than any of us Can have to retain our judgment in times of crisis and no man does that any battle than our great president? for instance as you will see from the book Discussing the rebates sent to taxpayers while he was governor of California president Reagan said I remember the third time we did that a long time senator state senator Came into my office one day outraged about our giving that money back to the people and he said that he considered Giving that money back to the people an unnecessary expenditure of public fund and that's true The next one is political, but I think you're like it the prep the president said There are some things that are current today and sweeping the country that I haven't had time to get for We recall That eight years ago and long before you made clear statements that some things are good and right and Some things are wrong Very wrong, and you made a very clear judgment in a time of moral uncertainty You reminded the nation that morality binds us that morality observed Creates a great people that a morality. Thank you so very much Peter grace has the shortest memory of any man. I know And when he departs from the text that's usually chaos Immediately after mass today, which was just a few hours ago. He told me that was the greatest homily He had ever heard in his entire life Three hours later. It's the greatest homily. He's heard in years If I see him for breakfast tomorrow morning, he'll probably ask me. What were you doing yesterday afternoon? Mr. President it is not my privilege to introduce you this evening or to speak about you this evening On the only occasion on which we are on this day as together We experienced a minor disaster. It was it was rather catastrophic for you. It was only minor for me Everyone had come up to the table. This was at the Al Smith dinner Everyone had come up to the table due to president and I arrived Mr. President I Regard it as a special and happy occasion this meeting between us the holder of supreme authority in your great nation who's defended and is Defending the principles of democracy and of man's freedom and the head of an order Which has placed its sovereignty at the service of the poor and the suffering and so of freedom from want This meeting is taking place at the moment when you're about to conclude your long and distinguished period of service conscious and proud of having ensured for your country an era of renewed trust and hope and of having given to our tormented world a reasonable possibility of peace The grandmaster on the other hand finds myself at the beginning of his service and in need of strong support Not only from his confrere in the order, but also from all men of goodwill and We are happy to see this goodwill in your noble nation. Mr. President It manifests itself in the generous and Outstanding assistance which the American associations the second largest one in the sovereign order gives to developing countries This is an activity in which Especially as regards the Latin American countries the ways of your nation and those of the sovereign order easily meet The American knights and dames have in addition Taken a leading role in combating the scourge of AIDS and the terrible plight of the hungry and the homeless More importantly, mr. President you defended the rights of the unborn spiritual values the order of Malta was and is an aristocracy of service the order can Confer on ahead of state the collar of the order of merit of the sovereign hospital order of Malta in Recognition of all that you and your government have done to help reduce human misery and I trust that this act First in the history of the order with regard to an American president May represent the beginning of ever closer relations Not only with the numerous American confrere, but also with the entire American people Allow me mr. President to conclude this brief address With the expression of my warmest wishes and those of the orders government For serenity and happiness in this new phase of your life Thank you very much Your eminences your Excellency your most eminent Highness President Peter grace and ladies and gentlemen Tonight for me is a Is a moment from humility to stand here before you the members of the most ancient order of its kind in the world formed in the holy land 900 years ago Or as some of us would say only yesterday But to stand in this way before the members of this order with its remarkable history Which speaks to the entire ebb and flow of Western civilization and its noble present Which is a monument to the highest values of free men and women is to be reminded once again That the only true calling of man is service to God and To have served in that calling is cause not for pride, but for gratitude Today is for nine centuries you the knights and dames of Malta serve the victims of poverty hunger and disease I've often noted that in America We have a tradition that began when the first community of settlers Joined together to help build a home for a newcomer The tradition of neighbor helping neighbor the tradition of the barn raising and the settlement house and the church run hospital The tradition that tookville spoke of in wonderment more than a century and a half ago When he observed that when there was a job to do Americans didn't wait for the government, but pitched in and did it for themselves Well, yes an American tradition But one more ancient and universal as well of which history offers few examples more crystalline and enduring than the knights of Malta Now if I may tell you a story You don't find this spirit of love and mercy everywhere, which makes you appreciate it all the more when you do find it When I was still fairly new in my former line of work the movie business I Was cast to play opposite Errol Flynn in a picture called the Santa Fe Trail The movie was really about John Brown the abolitionist who led the famous raid on Harper's Ferry Raymond Massey played John Brown and he gave his character that perfect touch of insanity Mike Cortes directed and I've always thought the studio picked the perfect man to direct a film about a madman They give you an idea of what I mean We'd reached the end of the picture the scene in which they hang John Brown when Mike flew into one of his rages He was furious. He just discovered he couldn't actually hang Massey He'd have to use a dummy instead Well, then he started moving around the actor who was playing the minister who stood by Brown in the scaffolding He was setting up the shop The shot looking through the camera viewfinder and motioning to the actor to move about first left then right finally back And the poor fellow took one step too far back fell 12 feet from the scaffold and broke his leg Mike walked across looked down where he lay on the ground turned to his assistant and said give me another minister If only I could treat Congress that way But to return to faith hope and love Your work with the ill in particularly those with leprosy now those with AIDS Your partnership with Americans and its president Bob McCauley to move medicine to those in need all over the world Your support of Mother Teresa's care for the poorest of the poor Your work feeding the hungry in Latin America These are some of the highest examples of love compassion and mercy in our time They show the power of faith moving in the modern world I've heard a lot about this being the era of greed Usually from those who really mean the taxes are too low and government is too small. I Wish these critics would explain how it is that in the past eight years During this supposed era of greed Charitable giving has risen to record highs in our nation Last year in cash alone 94.7 billion dollars Not too long ago. We found it's even higher than we thought No one it turned out had ever fully added up what Americans give to their neighbors in need Through their churches synagogues and other religious organizations Some of this was because of the difficulty of gathering the information But I expect that it may also have reflected a secularist bias Whenever we've talked about the immensity of American giving critics have been quick to retort Well that much of it is through church congregations and that not much of that goes to the poor and the hungry Now a private organization called independent sector has added up what America's Congregations actually do pass on Not just conjecture about it It found that the giving to the media from these sources Amounts to more than half of the national total In other words, we already knew that private giving in America through corporations Foundations and other easily seen bodies was the highest in the world And now we know that this giving is only about a third of all American private giving to the needy That sure doesn't sound like greed to me By the way, I suspect that a dollar that comes from our churches and synagogues goes farther to help those in need Than one that comes from the government and I don't mean just because the government's overhead is higher Know it's that the state's power is at its root the power to coerce for example to demand Taxes the power of the church is the power of love and that makes all the difference Why is it that in this city would spend so much on its social service bureaucracy? So many young people find their refuge and salvation in father Ritter's Covenant House Could it be that there and the priests and nuns and volunteers they see the face of love entering their lives for the first time They aren't a case to be handled Which they would be if they were in the hands of the government agencies But a soul to be cherished 20 years ago the government declared a war on poverty poverty won Too many poor people were sucked into a system that declared that the only sin is not to have enough money Soon too many became dependent on government payments and lost the moral strength that has always given the poor the Determination to climb America's ladder of opportunity In my view the great lesson of that experience is that no war on poverty Stands a chance unless it rises above the secular state And is guided by the power of love that moves through god's word Now i know that when the knights talk of the power of love and serving The least of these thy brethren You also mean as i do protecting the unborn Our critics call themselves pro-choice But have they ever stopped to think that the unborn never have a choice When roe versus wade goes as i have faith it must The way of dread scot and separate but equal a new debate will rise in the state houses of our land And the voice that i believe must be heard and in the end shall be heard over all the others Is the voice of life The knights can be part of that voice Can i count on you in just seven days i will lay down the mantle of this great office the american people have bestowed upon me I won't leave the battle as long as there's breath in me i will fight for the principles in which i believe But if i may in this moment of leaving office make two special requests of you The first is that you prepare now to be a part of that voice of life in the great debate ahead And the second that you help america find a way out of the trap of the welfare state Help it find a way to open the doors of hope and love open them as no state any state ever can for those in need Help open the promises of this land of shining opportunity to all I believe now as i always have that america strength is in We the people this great experiment in faith and freedom will rise or fall on the courage of we the people And you who have so willingly and ably taken up the burdens of freedom Through the knights and throughout your lives You who are surely part of what jefferson called our natural aristocracy You will surely be in the front as we the people Turn to the dawn of america's tomorrows Thank you and god bless you