Aipamena

Middle East Eye@MiddleEastEye

Aipamena

Greg J Stoker@gregjstoker

api. 7

“We’re killing them, we’re killing their wives, their children, their cats, their dogs. We’re destroying their houses and pissing on their graves.” “The IDF really is fulfilling the public’s wishes, which state: ‘There are no innocents in Gaza’.”

oooooo

Aipamena

Dr.Motaz saleh@MotazSaleh2001

api. 7

Don’t Forget Dr. Hussam Abu Safieh, comment with your country’s flag

oooooo

Api. 8

The daughter of Orit Strook, the far-right Israeli Minister of Settlements, has filed a police complaint accusing her parents and one of her brothers of sexually assaulting her.

Why Using the Term “Jewish Supremacist” Is More Useful than Zionist (w/ Norm Finkelstein)

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eB06hqvBgEo)

In a conversation that’s immediately so rich Briahna forgets to introduce him, preeminent Gaza scholar, author, and professor Norman Finkelstein addresses how the crusade against wokeness is being weaponized by some, like Columbia Professor John McWhorter, to justify pro-Zionist free speech crackdowns on campus, and whether left-critics of woke excess have any responsibility to adjust their critiques as a response. He also debates the utility of the term “Zionism” versus “Jewish Supremacy,” and offers Brie a hilarious bit of dating advice. It’s a sprawling, intimate conversation you wont want to miss.

Transkripzioa:

0:00

it didn’t begin with Trump’s threat to withhold federal monies it began with

0:05

Jewish supremacist billionaires who threatened to withhold alumni monies john you work at Columbia University i

0:12

do speaking of speaking of clown cars Bill Maher just nauseates me he’s like

0:20

the pills very dovoid with horn rim glasses

0:27

i was not happy when Professor Chomsky signed up Harper’s letter it’s just a belief that everyone else has their own

0:34

state this is the rationale it’s which isn’t true i don’t have a state we’re the black American country no well

0:39

there’s only one solution nor stop with the Jewish boyfriends

0:47

that’s where I think the frustration came in him it was like don’t you see where this is going with Bernie i really

0:54

struggle because we know that he knows and because he’s actually he’s saying the right thing except for targeting

1:01

Netanyahu except for Israel as instead of Israel and so it’s he’s he’s actually

1:07

regurgitating demonstrating complete facility with the facts that should be changing his position when when I’ve had

1:14

debates with people not Bernie but other you know kind of boomer

1:21

generation Jewish folks who I desperately want to move on this issue

1:27

um I what I encounter is like the sort of it’s it’s the belie it’s just a

1:35

belief that everyone else has their own state this is the rationale it’s which isn’t true i don’t have a state we’re a

1:41

black American country no there’s a million there’s like 400 languages spoken in India and they don’t all get

1:46

their own state like what are we talking about that’s like not true anyway but this idea that like every other group

1:52

gets their own country except for Jewish people and that to resist that is

1:58

tacitly implicitly anti-Semitic and holding Jews to a different standard as every other group

2:05

and that because it is so important for

2:11

Jewish people to have this thing that everybody else allegedly has even if there are negative

2:17

consequences those consequences are worth being born by Palestinians mhm

2:22

yeah that that is that is where we land every time and that’s that’s why this Jewish

2:28

supremacy language I think is very helpful to me now doesn’t make the arguments go any smoother i got to tell you when I start saying those words but

2:34

like that’s what gets to the core of the issue it’s like but what what you’re describing is in fact Jewish people get

2:41

have being arguing for a standard that is different and apart and superior to what other people are actually getting

2:47

on a regional basis and globally because as I’ve said everyone doesn’t get their own state and it’s being justified

2:54

frequently on the basis of this horrible tragedy that is the Holocaust but which does not merit does not warrant doing

3:00

the same to other people and I don’t know like I’m telling you I’ve had this conversation with

3:07

certain people in my life so many times and I don’t know how to get like I just

3:12

think generationally we’re not going to get like I just don’t think we’re going to get past that well there’s only one solution

3:20

nor stop with the Jewish boyfriends

3:30

okay okay first of all [Applause] the first

3:36

first of all the the person that I had in mind was not a partner or partner’s

3:42

parent although I have had arguments with partners a partner one partners

3:48

i’ve had one had one Jewish boyfriend Norm i had one Jewish boyfriend so shoot me

3:55

i was trying I was trying to be pragmatic about this you’ve you’ve obviously suffered a lot

4:02

of anguish a lot of anx so I feel like instead of trying to

4:09

convince just walk away

4:15

what am I supposed to do they’re all these nice the younger generation’s great you know it’s it’s it’s No but

4:21

actually I was thinking of I mean I don’t want to you know pull her in but we can all

4:27

imagine who I might be talking i’ll say it to you and we can bleep it out i’m talking about

4:32

uh um is is who like I mostly periodically on a regular basis end up

4:38

having this argument with um so I don’t know what to do about that

4:44

other than just like be hopeful and grateful that the younger generation feels differently uh young generation is

4:51

fine except for those

4:56

who there are brainwashed cohorts uh there there are cohorts that

5:03

are brainwashed there are cohorts who are just Jewish supremacists and uh and

5:08

that’s yeah and that’s look I don’t want to get into a long discussion about this

5:15

um the problem is you see the Jewish

5:22

supremacy is not just yes there is the choseness aspect or the

5:27

distorted understanding of the religious concept of uh Jewish choseness but I

5:36

don’t believe that’s the main factor because when I was growing up very few people were religious you

5:43

know Chuck Schumer there are things he says in the book which are factually correct surprisingly and there are quite

5:48

a few quite a few which are just completely ridiculous but you know he says when you uh grew up back then bar

5:55

mitzvah were you had to learn some passage uh uh passage from uh in Hebrew

6:04

uh and then it was mostly just flaunting wealth it was a coming

6:10

out party sort of thing in the Jewish community where he said if you have the

6:15

um celebration in the afternoon it was much cheaper than to have it in the evening and so there was a hierarchy did

6:23

you have your celebration in the evening or did you have it in the afternoon and he said the only reason kids went to

6:29

Hebrew school back then was just to learn the passage for the bar mitzvah that’s it there was no nothing else there uh in Hebrew school was on set

6:36

they went to Hebrew school once or twice a week to learn the passage so religion wasn’t uh it wasn’t an aspect of Jewish

6:45

life in my era but they were very

6:50

racist racist of course African-Americans the worst the worst I

6:57

can tell you I mean that’s why parts of what he says he said oh Jews growing up and I grew his he meaning uh Schumer

7:05

when I was growing up Jews all support civil rights that’s just a croc it’s not

7:11

true they supported in the south but when it came to your own

7:16

community your own city Jews fought tenaciously against busing fought

7:24

tenaciously against busing and then the black community the African-American

7:31

community concluded if they don’t want to integrate with us then we have no

7:38

alternative except community control to make our own schools better and then

7:45

came the big clash between the overwhelmingly Jewish teachers union

7:53

led by Albert Shanker versus the African-American and also Latino

7:59

advocates of community control and that was the great 1968 teacher strike which

8:07

lasted three and a half months we didn’t we didn’t start school till the middle of November

8:15

it was really two and a half months September no three and a half months it was and the

8:21

hatred of black people now they claim the hatred of Jews came out during that

8:27

there was a famous You remember the fellow who went by the name of Leroy Jones

8:33

no okay do you remember Amir Baraka okay so Mary Baraka’s name he changed

8:40

his name back then it was Leroy Jones oh if you look at his old plays um I forgot

8:50

I see the cover in my head but I can’t remember the name of it the Dutchman the

8:55

Dutchman uh you’ll see it’s Leroy Jones and he had written uh he had uh recited

9:01

this poem on WBAI the at that point you know the radical radio station in New

9:07

York WBAI where Amy Goodman still speaks out of WBAI radio and was called the

9:14

poem was called Hey Jub boy and it was ugly you know facts are facts I’m not

9:20

going to deny it uh but I know the real Jewish community not

9:27

the one that has been uh fabricated out of the uh truly heroic

9:35

Goodman uh Goodman Cheney

9:40

oh god and Rice no no no goodman Cheney and Schwer sherner Sherner cheney was

9:47

black goodman and Sherner were Jewish and a whole mythology was created about

9:53

that you know I’m speaking factually and I’m not here to sort of like be a um

10:02

muckreaker mine was the only family in the entire

10:09

neighborhood and this was upwardly mobile they weren’t rich yeah like

10:15

Schumer he’ll tell you five times in the book in fact the last sentence the next

10:20

the pen ultimate sentence of the book which simply repeats what he says over and over and over and over and over

10:27

again the book which is true he says “A country meaning the United States where

10:36

the son where the Jewish son of an

10:41

exterminator and a housewife could one day become the leader of the United

10:47

States Senate.” It’s true these were lower middle class people who went on to

10:56

fantastical success fantastical

11:01

success my high school as I I suspect I’ve told you before uh had not one not

11:07

two not three not four not five six Nobel

11:13

laureates could you imagine a public high school six Nobel laureates

11:20

we had at one period of time three

11:26

senators who were sitting senators Schumer Sanders and Norm Coleman from

11:34

Minnesota three the successor Ruth Bader Ginsburg also yeah ruth Bader Ginsburg

11:40

Judge Judy even what’s her name um oh god my memory uh the one who wrote Will

11:47

You Still Love Me Tomorrow oh come on a natural woman artha

11:55

Franklin no she sang it she’s from Detroit oh oh who wrote it oh um what’s

12:02

her name carol carol King i went to see your musical with my mom first yeah so

12:09

uh so I’m not talking about obscure people from some backwoods in the south

12:14

mine was the only family the only one that referred to black people by the

12:21

proper name back then i’m talking about the early the mid60s which was Negroes it hadn’t yet come black or

12:28

African-American every other family Schwartza which was do you know what Schwartza is yeah schwartza colored

12:36

black yeah schwartza the colors the colors or [ __ ] every other family

12:42

that was part of the parliament one of the fellows who went on he became a very successful doctor in

12:51

Washington I think he’s in the national institute for health I could give his name but it’s

12:56

not going to mean anything to anyone so what’s the point of it so his mother was five beta kappa I remember you know

13:02

these are little things you remember from as a kid we had black people were only

13:08

allowed in the neighborhood uh as maids as cleaning people that was the only

13:13

they were otherwise they couldn’t come in the neighborhood we had a private bus line cuz the city buses didn’t pass

13:18

through our neighborhood and they all left the maids the housekeepers at

13:24

5:00 and he would call that bus the [ __ ] express

13:29

that’s what he called it and this was as I said not obscure people this was the soontobe

13:37

fantastically successful Jews i had a friend her name was Ellen Ro Ellen

13:43

Shonfeld and her brother Richard i remember standing on the stoop with her

13:51

brother and he being emphatic that all all [ __ ] should be

13:57

thrown into gas chambers and I remember you know you see it in your mind’s eye i remember the

14:04

mother and father sitting at the kitchen table behind a screen door and

14:12

um no shock at a statement like that that was what it was really like so now

14:20

kid this is a conversation that’s happening you know 20 years after the Holocaust in

14:26

the in the memory of the parents of the kid that’s behind him yeah and he he they had no compunction about saying

14:32

things like that so now that brings me to the point I wanted to make about this

14:38

Jewish supremacy sure the point is

14:43

that Jews were so fantastically

14:49

successful in particular in the United States but

14:54

also with gradations in Israel as well and 90% of world jewelry

15:01

90% is either Israel or the United States yes 90% of all the Jews in the

15:07

world are in those two places and they enjoyed such

15:12

fantastical secular earthly success that it’s hard for it not to

15:18

have gone to their heads that sense of being superior so I

15:25

the choseness is sort of like a another

15:30

layer but the foundation is that fantastical success and it was deeply

15:37

not was is deeply corrupting and it’s so when

15:42

they uh the example you just gave

15:48

of well the state of Israel has to come into existence and some people are going to be harmed med by it well still the

15:56

Jews need the state it’s because uh they believe that uh it’s more important

16:04

because it’s Jews they’re Jewish supremacists that that’s what comes that’s what comes off in these conversations that’s that’s what it

16:11

feels like and I got to say as as a black person I’ve been thrust into

16:16

having some version of the conversation about equality which is always was on the fulcrum of like black inequality and

16:22

the relative superiority of various other groups and I have had the experience

16:28

of people coming to me not understanding why something was

16:33

racist like why a statement or a belief or something was racist and I’ve simply

16:40

changed I’ve taken the exact sentence that was said but changed the word black to and in one case I remember having

16:46

this debate with a South Asian person to changing it to Indian and suddenly it was very clear to him what was wrong

16:52

with the statement but he couldn’t process it because he internalized that what was being said about black people

16:58

and inferiority wasn’t just wasn’t in fact true and on the same metric I feel like there is this kind of positive

17:04

stereotyping with Jewish people that is like so internalized that as folks are

17:09

making these arguments in favor of Zionism they’re really not hearing how exceptional the exceptional standards

17:16

that they’re applying to one specific group that are in fact reflective of a of a superiority that’s a very difficult

17:22

thing to convey to people but as someone who’s been on the other side of that and the negative version of that like it’s

17:28

very clear to me and I’m I’m sure it’s like extremely clear to every Palestinian person an Arab person and

17:35

Muslim person that is seen that sees how casually people are able to justify an

17:42

equal treatment unequal treatment on the basis of one’s religious status or race or country of origin when you’re brown

17:48

and Muslim and blah blah blah blah so I I really appreciate you kind of validating my choice to use that phrase

17:54

and kind of normalizing it yourself i do before we wrap though want to come back to the reason that I extensively asked

18:00

you to come on which is is related and we’ve kind of been dancing around this a little bit it is what we do now with the

18:08

sort of criticisms of wokeness now that

18:14

the Trump administration has weaponized it weaponizing it in this really

18:19

incredible way and I saw this clip of claim professor John Mcuarter on Bill

18:25

Maher which sat uncomfortably with me precisely because John Mcuarter flipped

18:33

what was a critique from Bill Maher sort of surprisingly of the authoritarian actions on Colombia’s

18:40

campus into a well they kind of brought it on on themselves because of wokeness excuse making i want to just

18:48

have I want to play the clip to refresh your memory and then I want to get your I’ve not seen it so you can’t refresh my

18:54

memory i’ll be seeing it for the first time okay perfect all right so um John

19:00

you work at Columbia University i do speaking of speaking of clown cars

19:08

um and [Music] uh I should say that I have been on a

19:15

blissful sbatical for the entire year lucky you i only know so much but go ahead all

19:21

right well I mean LA starting last week Trump is going to war now on elite universities now I cannot be a hypocrite

19:28

i went through my book that came out last year it’ll be out in paperback very soon um

19:35

and I I I can’t be a hypocrite i wrote down some of the things that I have said over the past that were gathered in the

19:41

book uh don’t go to an elite college it makes you stupid elite universities are the mouth

19:48

of the river from man which manner all radical left illiberal yes illiberal

19:53

nonsense flows there are four-year daycare centers for the crybullies of the

20:00

privileged to complain about privilege college today is not the college you remember it’s a day spa and a North

20:06

Korean re-education camp put together they’re [ __ ]

20:13

factories if ignorance is a disease Harvard yard is the Wuhan wet market

20:18

okay so so that’s where I am

20:23

i can’t

20:28

but as with So I I I get the inclination but as with most things now with this

20:34

new administration the way they do it you can’t do it by taking people off the

20:40

street just because they wrote an op-ed pro Palestinian i’m not pro Palestinian

20:45

the way they see it either but or you know that these these people who are

20:50

just disappeared because they have a a tattoo i’m so glad I don’t have tattoos

20:57

no I should say that the kind of student you’re talking about in my experience is

21:02

a minority of the students i don’t I don’t see the whole campus as this but there is a problem i mean frankly

21:09

Colombia has tried for example this year to eradicate or at least dampen

21:14

anti-semitism i mean man Shafi did get 100 students arrested you now cannot get

21:20

onto the campus without a card which is in order to protect especially Jewish students from having to listen to

21:25

anti-semitic protests all day long the three administrators who were nakedly anti-semitic in their texts were

21:31

justifiably fired i But the thing is I don’t think this is really about anti-semitism from the Trump

21:37

administration i think they care about as much about anti-semitism as a kitchen cabinet or a spoon what they are really

21:45

upset about is just wokeness in general and universities do have a problem with

21:50

wokeness that is a that is a real problem yes they have a problem with I

21:56

if you have immediate thoughts I’ll let you get in there before I do

22:02

i have a lot of immediate thoughts i’ll just zoom in on

22:08

one problem of anti-semitism at Columbia University i was just recently in the

22:15

last couple of days i was in correspondence with Bruce Robbins who is

22:22

a senior professor at Colombia he’s Jewish extremely smart guy um and I asked him I I was at the

22:31

encampments i met with the people i didn’t know this in the

22:37

anti-semitism i asked him he said “It’s just all nonsense.” He said “Even the report that

22:44

came out the Colombia task force and anti-semitism it was authored by three

22:51

well-known pro-Israel professors on campus they were selected to for the task force

22:57

actually I have it right over here because I just printed it out yesterday there was no evidence

23:04

there and even the Times Chronicle of Higher Education the person who wrote the article on the

23:10

report he said the goods aren’t there and to

23:15

say listening to anti-semitic sh you know I’m sorry to have to say it but I

23:23

will be the one to say it mr mcwater is not very bright it just is not very

23:29

smart i’m not going to fight you on that one like I thought you over Obama there’s no there’s no evidence the

23:37

smuggness just like Bill Maher’s smuggness you know the um the common

23:45

place that conceit is just the face of

23:51

insecurity and it’s the same with the smuggness bill Maher just nauseiates me

23:57

he’s like the pills very dough boy with horn horn rim

24:09

glasses i find him so unbearable he’s writing he’s reciting the lines he says

24:16

and he has to read i thought you wrote those lines you didn’t write those lines your writers wrote those lines that’s

24:22

why you have to read them and you can’t even read them correctly you know um but

24:29

as I said um there is a problem there were many problems with the wokeness

24:36

that the with the DEI it stifled speech it stifled the free flow of ideas

24:45

the classes the reading lists they were

24:51

suffocating i would just because I don’t like to speak in generalities i think I was writing to somebody today a student

24:58

of mine you’re too much at the abstract you have to go back and forth be between the abstract and the concrete

25:06

okay otherwise you lose the reader um so I’m going to give you two examples

25:13

concrete examples one of them is the woke reading

25:19

lists it really irked me i have students who have high

25:25

aspirations and they’re excellent students one of them two years ago it

25:32

looked like he was going to go away for 40 years because of wrong place wrong

25:38

time wrong people the judge gave him a second chance it’s called the second chance uh he asked me to be his

25:45

mentor uh I told him “What are what do you want to do?” I asked him “What do

25:51

you want to do?” He said “I want to be a uh criminal lawyer.” First rate criminal lawyer he said i said “What are your

25:57

majors?” because he said business and psychology i say “Forget that that’s not going to happen you’re going to major in

26:03

philosophy and English philosophy because law is about reasoning English because law is about writing.” And two

26:10

weeks later I get an email from him he said “I switched majors.” To cut to the

26:16

chase he took the the highest level courses he took only one 100 level

26:23

course he just plunged into it he has 23 straight A’s 23 straight A’s and he’s

26:30

now a finalist for a Fulbright to study medieval literature amazing

26:37

yeah in the UK and he’s um a Haitian immigrant now why do I bring it

26:45

up what relevance is that so at the beginning the first few

26:50

semesters when we were working together we would go through the uh English

26:56

literature the offerings the course offerings

27:01

you could not you I think they had one one Shakespeare

27:07

course one they had one British literature course one out of

27:17

maybe a hundred course offerings

27:22

and it made me very angry you know why it made me angry

27:28

because all these liberal elites with their

27:34

DEI they send their children to schools like the one you

27:40

attended and they learn their Shakespeare and they read the whole

27:47

canon wait allow me i don’t know that I even read I don’t think I read any Shakespeare in college i’m going to be

27:53

honest with you okay that’s I don’t think I took a single class that required me to read i’m trying to think

27:58

of what it would have been but you read it in high school yeah in high school and I read it in junior high school we

28:06

started in seventh grade with Julius Caesar i remember it like yesterday because I remember discussing Antony’s

28:13

speech and how Anthony appealed to emotions and so forth okay yeah we had to memorize friends Roman’s countrymen

28:19

at some point right exactly and in my senior year in high school we have to memorize Hamlet speeches yeah my point

28:27

is my point is even if by some miracle

28:33

they get into a top law school they’re so completely overwhelmed and shattered

28:40

when everybody else is making references to Kant and references to Mill and

28:45

references to Durkheim and references to Shakespeare and references to this and

28:51

that and they can’t compete they’re unable because they’re taking courses

28:58

and I can’t even tell you the titles of the courses they’re the literature courses because they now be accused of

29:05

every kind of ism but you can imagine the title of the courses they’re being

29:10

taught and that’s unfair to the students

29:16

because it makes them uncompetitive when they strive for

29:21

getting into top schools it’s unfair to them and we would struggle going through

29:28

I say don’t take that don’t take that garbage garbage garbage garbage garbage and then we would find one course or two

29:34

courses fortunately he had what’s called a passport to take any course in the

29:40

whole system so he could go to the main the flagship schools Baroo Leman

29:45

Brooklyn Queens Hunter and so he could find the courses because it was over

29:51

this whole system what they were learning was junk by

29:57

apparachics but that’s one problem the second problem which to me was a major

30:03

problem and you might recall at the end of the spring last year I don’t know if we did any programs

30:10

together but I kept saying this is the most fanta the most outrageous brazen

30:16

assault in academic history in our country and it was going from podcast to

30:22

podcast referring to the crushing of the encampments and everything that happened thereafter and people looked at me like

30:28

“Oh there’s Finkelstein the liberal free speech academic freedom you know we’re

30:33

about the struggle.” And I said “This is a catastrophe what’s happening.”

30:41

And they had lost the language of defending free speech

30:50

because the whole woke culture was if it makes you feel unsafe unwanted or

30:58

uncomfortable it shouldn’t be said unsafe unwanted

31:03

uncomfortable and as you know as a law school graduate our whole

31:10

history beginning at the of the at the start of the 20th

31:15

century was defending any kind of speech however uncomfortable it made you

31:24

to the point our Supreme Court ruled in the face of a large mass of patriotic

31:32

citizens Our Supreme Court ruled you had the right to burn the American

31:38

flag as expressive speech our Supreme Court ruled you have

31:45

the right to advocate the violent overthrow of our government that is

31:54

protected speech talk about unwanted uncomfortable

32:00

unwelcome the Supreme Court the state supreme court ill in Illinois ruled that the

32:07

Nazi party had the mar the right to march through a community of Holocaust

32:13

survivors in Skoi Illinois i’ll tell you and I’ve said it

32:18

several times I work for a radical newspaper i work for the it was called the Guardian

32:24

a Mauist newspaper okay we’re sitting there on the 12th floor talking about

32:31

armed struggle to overthrow our government and institute the dictatorship of the proletariat okay you

32:38

might say crazy fine we wrote that every week in our

32:43

newspaper okay nobody ever thought it was illegal we worried about Asian

32:51

provocators but we never worried about that as being

32:57

protected speech i never worried about getting arrested for saying

33:03

that so now to bring it up to the present so I open up Chuck Schumer’s

33:10

book Anti-Semitism in America and he talks a lot about the genocide charge

33:18

against Israel the genocide charge against Israel and if you read

33:24

carefully because of time I can’t go on longer if you read

33:29

carefully why is he opposed to the genocide charge he makes a few very you

33:35

might call it superficial arguments more Jews died during World War II you know things like

33:42

that okay but what’s his main argument his main argument

33:47

is it makes Jews feel

33:52

bad jews feel it’s vicious

33:58

jews feel like you’re comparing it to what Jews went through during World War

34:05

II the whole argument and as you know he’s an he is a graduate of the same

34:11

institution as you law school as you but he has now

34:19

weaponized that woke language and

34:26

eaced like the woke crowd did that whole history of struggle to defend that right

34:35

to free speech that was a complete and total disaster and this is not Monday

34:44

morning quarterbacking you have my book I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it on

34:50

page 37 I wrote I said specifically to the

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Palestinians I said “If you use the argument that Israeli speakers make you

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feel unwelcome uncomfortable and unwanted Jewish students are going to

35:10

use this pro-israel students are going to use the same argument it’s going to backfire.” Hey YouTube thanks for

35:16

watching just a reminder that this is a podcast you can catch an extra premium episode every Monday for $5 a month at

35:24

patreon.com/badfaithpodcast that’s patreon.com/badfaithpodcast for $5 a month an extra episode every week

35:30

additionally please do consider liking this video subscribing to this channel it helps us out it helps independent

35:36

media beat the algorithm we appreciate you and as always keep the faith

35:41

[Music]