9/9/26: Wild Socialist Conference Goes Off The Rails, New Doc Exposes Caribbean Boat Strikes

25:03Emily Jashinsky:Yes, that's so well said. And if we can just go after the Koch brothers. It's astroturf. And it's astroturfed. It's not real. So well said. And yes, is there some funding from the Kochs involved in it? Of course. But there's also real anger. And they missed it because of their refusal to engage with it. And they tried to do the same thing with Bernie. It's all Russia-funded. Right. Yes, Russian bots or whatever. Like, yeah. And look, the Russian bots are on a roll, if that's the case. Hell of a decade for the Russian bots. Finally, because we teased it. This is, I think, worth showing. This is Momdani announcing a new office that has been created.

25:40Emily Jashinsky:It is what socialists can do in the real world. What actual democratic socialists are doing in office, yes. Let's take a look. Do you remember when you said this? Because whether you are organizing a museum or a bar, we have your backs. Of course I do. And today we're announcing the office of worker power.

25:58This is a first of its kind in the country office that we are setting up to help workers organize. Whether you are working in a hotel, whether you are working in a hospital, whether you are working as a barista, you are a worker. And as a worker, you should have protections. We know that when workers try to organize, there's all kinds of tactics that are used against them.

26:19Emily Jashinsky:and we will make sure that when workers are intimidated that they know that they don't stand alone. I work for the Jewel Hotel. I've been working for the Jewel Hotel for 16 years. I'll be stuck there working 60 hours a week easily. And I couldn't say no because they'll tell me, Lord, if you abandon your job, we're just going to replace you. What would the ideal outcome be for a worker who comes to the office? To me, it is that a worker leaves the office with a better understanding of the rights they already have and the ways in which that they can win the rights that they deserve. And that's the key difference.

26:50The DSA is backed by people, workers. Mamdani is backed by voters. What you saw at that quote unquote socialism conference is backed by philanthropies and universities without a mass backing from workers. That is the difference. So one of them is a mass movement. The other is a conference.

27:15Emily Jashinsky:Yes. Shop the Sherwin-Williams Labor Day sale and get 35 % off paints and stains August 28th through September 9th. Whether you're refreshing your interior or exterior, we've got the colors to bring your vision to life. And with delivery, getting everything to your door is easier than ever. Shop online to have it delivered or visit your neighborhood Sherwin-Williams store. Click the banner to learn more. Retail sales only. Some exclusions apply. See store for details. Delivery available on qualifying orders. self-care September is here which means it's time to rethink what self-care actually means yes self-care can be a long walk it can be an everything shower it can be putting your phone on do not disturb but sometimes it's actually about sitting with the uncomfortable stuff and understanding your patterns your boundaries finally figuring out why you keep doing things that you swore you would never do again I'm Gemma Spegg the host of the psychology of your 20s podcast and each week we unpack the psychology behind the experiences that shape your 20s from relationships and friendships to money anxiety confidence attachment just becoming more comfortable with who you are unlike the quarter life crisis which is depicted as the collapse the quarter life reinvention is the expansion and growth of something when we develop the ability to be happy by ourselves nobody else can take that from you so this self-care september don't just take care of yourself, get to know yourself as well.

28:40Listen to The Psychology of Your 20s on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

29:10would you say a d-list actor d i don't even know there's such thing as d no no no i mean like i can't even get on the c list like i'm not even average i'm not even passing i'm failing listen to no safe words with october and tony gonzalez part of my culture podcast network available on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast the u.s is expanding its attacks on what they call drug smuggling and drug operations in the Pacific and in the Caribbean. You can put this element up on the screen. Striking what they said was a ship that was used to kind of refuel drug boats. Kind of a significant escalation, even as we reach the one-year mark of Pete Heggs' war on drug boats in the Caribbean, and the price of drugs and availability of drugs has not budged, although more than 200 people have been killed and disappeared.

30:13A new investigation called Killing at Sea is out now on Al Jazeera English. Josh Rushing, who is one of the lead investigators in that report, is joining us now to discuss this. Highly recommend everybody check this out. We'll play a clip at the end of this interview for people. But first of all, thank you for coming by the studio. Really appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Ryan and Emily. I really appreciate it as well. And also, it's not just out on Out of Zero Week. It's on YouTube, so everyone can see it for free anytime. Yes, exactly. Yes. Go pause this and go watch it. Seriously, very worth

30:46Emily Jashinsky:watching. So I wanted to start with a couple of things that this has been done sort of in the open, except for this couple of the strikes that Dropside has been covering that apparently involved some secret CIA program, which is very weird and we can maybe get into that later. But most of this has been done out in the open. Attacks on these fishing boats, videos posted online, bragging about the crimes publicly. The first strike, which did garner some significant attention because there were two survivors of it who were then killed by the Americans in a what is a by definition of war crime like the the rules around shipwrecked sailors have been very clear in war for hundreds of years and apparently even in the war college it's it's a for instance like you shall not do these things.

31:46For instance, if there are sailors who are shipwrecked clinging, clinging, you know, to their shipwreck device, you have to at least try to save them. Instead, we killed them. The second, tell us about the second time that the U.S. launched a strike on on a vessel, because I think that what they did with the survivors here is really revealing about this entire project. You touched on a number of things that I'd love to kind of go back on. That these were done in the open. One of the things is, so for Operation Southern Spear, which ended in early August and they transitioned to Joint Task Force Western Hemisphere, which is going to be a much larger version of what we've witnessed that will include land, sea, and airstrikes, a definite military expansion into Latin America and Central America.

32:37That's what the Operation Southern Sphere was really an entree to. And I think that's really important. That's where this narrative and that's where the scrutiny needs to go.

32:45Emily Jashinsky:So that's what started last September, September 2nd, 2015. Was Operation Southern Sphere. Southern Sphere. The one we just passed the one year anniversary. It was the first strike where there were, it was a double tap. Caribbean. And it was in the Caribbean. Now, to say they're done now in the open, what's kind of interesting is it's almost, if it is a crime, it's almost a perfect crime because it is done over the horizon. No one can really prove that their loved one died in one of these strikes. All they know is dad or their husband left and didn't come back, which sometimes happens with fishermen.

33:16But they didn't come back on the same day that the U.S. announces there's a strike. Now, the U.S. announced, I think, 61 strikes and killing 221 people in that time period up to the first week of August. It has now expanded to, I think, we're over 225, maybe more than that, now that we're in the second phase of this. But in that first phase, the number is at 221. But there's an important caveat. It's 221 people and 61 strikes that the U.S. government has told us about. The only reason we even know this is happening is that the U.S. government has posted these videos. They're bragging about it.

33:49They're often bragging and boasting about it. And what's insane about it is so they say that these are – it's a war, that these are enemy combatants. And so what we wanted to see at Bultwins are who are these enemy combatants? What's the other side of this war like? So we went down to meet them. They have no idea that they're involved in a war in the U.S. They have no idea that they're enemy combatants. And particularly those when you bring up the first strike on 9-2, they would have no idea why. Like they wouldn't even know why the boat blew up. And so there is video that Trump posted on social is true social, right?

34:24There's a second video, though, that they haven't allowed anyone to see except for select Congress members that shows the second strike. And the way it's been described is 45 minutes later, two guys still clinging to wreckage in the water and waving to the aircraft above because they probably had no idea that that aircraft fired on them. They think it might be there to save them. And then they get killed by the same aircraft. Now, you're right about what they teach at the War College. I'm a former Marine officer. And it's not just on the water. When someone's out of the fight, you can't execute them.

34:57You take them as a POW. You even have to render aid. to them, medical aid. It's just the laws of war. And there are several different regimes, legal regimes that you could apply to this. International humanitarian law, human rights law, maritime law, the laws of war, our own domestic law. And all of those, there is no compelling argument that this is anything other than murder or a war crime or both. To go to the second strike, it was the Carranza family who we go down and interview. They're in Santa Marta, Colombia, that happened last September. One of the things that's interesting about it is, as a journalist, I think as long as it's just numbers in the U.S., no one's really paying attention to this.

35:44So you always want to put a face to numbers, right? So hard to do in this case. One, to confirm that this person was actually lost in a strike and not their boat just sunk or whatever, right? But two, to find a family willing to talk. They're scared of the Trump administration. They're scared of their own administration, which are all shifting rapidly, right? And they're often maybe scared of narcos if narcos are involved. Right. So it was really difficult. We worked with journalists on the ground for months in six different countries to try to find families. And there's an excellent consortium of investigative journalists across Latin America that I would point people to, LCLIP.org.

36:26They do excellent work in Latin America. They were the first to really to identify some survivors. I think they started with 13 and might be up to 21 now. Air Wars, who we also worked with, has been tracking survivors, but through LCLIP mostly. So a big shout out to LCLIP for being able to identify survivors. But one of the interesting things about this particular family, the Carranza family that was in the second strike that we highlight in the film, is that they're one of the few families to actually pursue legal recourse. So they have an attorney in the U.S. that has filed a claim in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and they're trying to pursue some sense of justice for their lost family member.

37:05Although I will say while Katrin, who is the mother of the children, they weren't together at the time that Alejandro Cronzo was killed, is pursuing this, which means she's accepted his fate. It's not true of his children. Like his youngest son, who's probably between 8 and 10, told me that his dad's a really strong swimmer and that he comes to him in his dreams. And he'll tell his sisters, his sister told us, that he'll say, I'm going to go walk around town so I can see if dad's out there, if I can run into dad. So they haven't even – it's – I've been in journalism for 21 years at Al Jazeera, and I've often done the disappeared as opposed to the killed.

37:45And it's a fate worse than death for the family because there is no closure. and there's always wondering and and that's basically what we're rendering in the videos that you talked about that young boy his mom was keeping it from him what happened to his dad or what they thought might have happened to his dad at that point other kids at school bring the video to him and say oh your dad's a drug runner and trump killed him and show him the video which traumatized them traumatized them and the dehumanization involves when they post these videos as if they're just video games and there are there isn't some kid on the other side of that video watching it saying, is that my dad?

38:19Because it was the same thing as St. Lucia too. They watched that video over and over and over again. Is there a chance he survived? Is that dad? It's haunting to them. And yet for these guys, Hexf, Trump, they act like it's a video game that they won and they're moving on to the next level.

38:33Emily Jashinsky:When they're operating on the premise that it can be kind of a funny troll because it is almost certain that these fishermen were running drugs and acting as enemy combatants, literally enemy combatants against the United States. Now, we had a problem with fentanyl. It is highly unlikely that, and fentanyl is down, but it's highly unlikely that any of these boats were trafficking fentanyl. You can tell us more because you're on the ground. What is the likelihood that there was any, like, set the extrajudicial stuff aside. It was obviously egregious and ridiculous. But let's even just take the Trump administration's point that these are drug runners that are operating as enemies against the homeland.

39:13Emily Jashinsky:What evidence did you uncover that there's any truth to that? So I would love to discuss theoretically if these were drug runners. Let's talk about the legality of that. But first, I want to lay out that the Carranza family and the families that we found in St. Lucia, the Joseph family and the William family of Nafti Williams and Ricky Joseph, who were on the boat that was blown up there, insist that they had nothing to do with drugs, insist that they didn't. And I want to make clear that we're not implying that they did. There has been no evidence to say that they did. Let's say they did. These families that I found, I found Lucia, who's Ricky Joseph's partner.

39:52They have four children. When I found her in St. Lucia, there was no electricity in the house because she couldn't afford it. There was very little food for the four kids. We spent the first day getting electricity on, getting food in the house before we even sat down to really talk about what's going on. Her own government hasn't checked on It's been five months. Ricky, she says, made about$2 ,000 a year as a fisherman. $2 ,000 a year to survive, right? They're barely getting by when he was working. And now they're gone. Right. If he was a drug, some big-time drug runner, you'd think they'd have food and electricity.

40:21If he was a drug runner, they wouldn't be living like this, right? Or even if he was and they were living like this, how far down the total hole do you think he is at the cartel? In the Carranza family, Katrin is now having to cook meals and try to sell them as lunches on the street and to people in the neighborhood so that she can survive. The oldest daughter got a scholarship to college. It's an online college. They can't afford a laptop for her to go. So she's helping mom with the meals right now. If they were really part of a Colombian drug cartel, how far down do you think they are that that's how they're living, right?

40:55Emily Jashinsky:And isn't that like the extent of the evidence is that maybe there's some small amounts of cocaine on some of these boats? Maybe. Maybe. Okay, so we don't know the legal criteria to strike a vote because it's in a classified Justice Department document, an OLC decision that only select members of Congress can see. And when they see it, they can't take a lawyer. They can't take their national security expert. Only the congressperson can see it, right? And didn't the lawyers refuse to even go down to the Hill to defend it? I think that's what I had heard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But here's what we do know that's in there.

41:25So in the OLC, it will have the legal justification and the criteria to strike a vote. Yes. Senator Cain and Senator Paul found an interesting way to talk about it. They've both seen the document. They can't say what they've seen because it's classified, but they can say what wasn't there. And one of the things they both brought up that isn't in the criteria is are there drugs on the boat? There doesn't have to be drugs on the boat for this strike legally from the U.S.

41:51Emily Jashinsky:Not that they would have anyone even verified. Their legal claim. Unless they have human intelligence on the boat or around the boat. Perhaps they could track its satellites. Perhaps they could get contracted by drones, but it doesn't matter because they don't need drugs on the boat to blow them up, according to their own Justice Department. Which is why trials matter. Blows your mind, right? Yeah. But let's talk about this is really about fentanyl, right? So I go to St. Lucia and I ask them, well, this is a war against fentanyl. What do you think about fentanyl? And I had more than a handful of people tell me, what is fentanyl?

42:18Right. They've never heard of fentanyl there. They don't know what it is. And yet they're caught up in a war over it. So, OK, it's not about fentanyl because fentanyl doesn't actually come out of Colombia and Venezuela, right? It's made in the U.S., it comes from China, it comes across the land border from Mexico, but it doesn't come from down there. So it's not about that. So, okay, let's just say broadly it's about stopping drugs. In December, the U.S. killed more than 20 people with multiple strikes in the water in the same month that President Trump pardons Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras, who's convicted by a jury of Americans of trafficking 400 to 500 tons of cocaine into the U.S.

42:53and saying we're going to shove these drugs right up the noses of the gringos. This is on tape, right? Yeah. So people don't miss that. What did Juan Orlando Hernandez say on tape? We're going to shove these drugs right up the noses of the gringos. And where is he now? Fully pardoned and back in Honduras. He was given a 45-year sentence. He was convicted guilty by an American jury. And the same month that we killed 20 of these poor people riding around on little boats, right, we let him go. So if you're really serious about stopping drugs, what's the question there? Now, Rubio says -

43:25Emily Jashinsky:Telsey Rodriguez is in charge of Venezuela and was apparently part of the same cartel that Maduro was in prison for. And Maduro isn't facing any capital charges. No death penalty is on the line for Maduro. Why is it on the line for these guys on the boats? Even if they were, right? It's a good point. Shipping drugs. And so it's like you can punch hole after hole in the argument to show that this is not about drugs in the United States. Marco Rubio says drugs with Ventolin coming to our shores is an exigent threat to the country and we can take them out. Now, coming to our shores is a stretch. These boats are designed to go 50 to 100 miles.

44:00Ricky Joseph, Noppy Williams, their boat was blown up 1 ,500 miles away from the U.S. It's not coming to our shores in these boats. Couldn't, yeah. I mean, they're a continent away. We're blowing up boats and acting as if they could have landed in Miami tomorrow. And that is not a fact. So after they got a lot of heat for killing the shipwrecked sailors, there was another strike where there were survivors. Yes. Tell us what happened after that strike. Now that the lawyers are involved saying, okay, this could have been a criminal act on top of a criminal act. So what do they do this time? Okay, so the survivors are a really interesting part of understanding the legality of this.

44:42I know of at least three strikes where there have been survivors. and one of them, there were two survivors. Well, okay, one of them was a survivor from, I believe, Colombia, who has been in a intensive care unit in Costa Rica since it happened and hasn't spoken to anyone. And I don't think he can speak. And I've heard he probably won't because the situation is dire. Two others, one was returned to Colombia and one was to return to Ecuador. And we've been in touch with some of those families and there's no way they're going to talk to us. And they've gone off the radar. The family says they haven't heard from them anymore.

45:11But here's the interesting thing. How do they get back to their homes in Colombia and Ecuador. Well, after the strikes, we repatriated them to their country. Okay, so these guys are such a threat to the U.S., these terrorists, that we can kill them on site unless they happen to survive that, and then we take them home with no charges. They're not POWs in the war. Why wouldn't they be POWs in this war if it's a war? Because it's not a war. That's right. And so the survivors show you kind of a whole nother. So then what they did was we can't pick up survivors in the water because it exposes like this whole thing.

45:44So they had a boat go down in the Pacific off of Central America. There were like nine or ten survivors in the water. So the U.S. calls a rescue plane from the Coast Guard. Where do you think they called that plane from? Utah. Well, it's got to be San Diego, right? It's like Utah. Oh, Utah. Where Air Wars has a great report on this that shows the plane circling for hours before it actually heads down to El Salvador, has to have a crew rest before it goes out to look on the water. So you have eight guys in the open seas waiting for rescue. Our rescue plane gets there and 45 short hours later. Self-care September is here, which means it's time to rethink what self-care actually means.

46:24Yes, self-care can be a long walk. It can be an everything shower. It can be putting your phone on do not disturb. But sometimes it's actually about sitting with the uncomfortable stuff and understanding your patterns, your boundaries. finally figuring out why you keep doing things that you swore you would never do again. I'm Gemma Spegg, the host of the Psychology of Your 20s podcast, and each week we unpack the psychology behind the experiences that shape your 20s, from relationships and friendships to money, anxiety, confidence, attachment, just becoming more comfortable with who you are. Unlike the quarter-life crisis, which is depicted as the collapse, the quarter-life reinvention is the expansion and growth of something.

47:03when we develop the ability to be happy by ourselves nobody else can take that from you so this self-care September don't just take care of yourself get to know yourself as well listen to the psychology of your 20s on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts hey what's up I'm Tony Gonzalez and I'm October Gonzalez but you can call me Toby we want you to join us on our new podcast No Safe Words with October and Tony Gonzalez where we get real about marriage, parenthood, sex, divorce and all the nitty gritty stuff we all think about, but just don't say out loud. I hate that job.

47:37You're probably just going to meet with some rich guy and he's going to whisk you away and I'll never see you again. Well, this is awkward. Would you say a D-list actor? D? I don't even know there's such a thing as D. No, no, no. I mean like... I can't even get on the C-list? Like I'm not even average? I'm not even passing? I'm failing? Listen to No Safe Words with October and Tony Gonzalez, part of My Cultura Podcast Network. Available on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Alec Baldwin. This season on my podcast, here's the thing I'm speaking with more artists, policymakers, and performers like actor Stephen Root.

48:14I think for me to be any good or for any character to be any good, you got to put enough of yourself and your empathy for people in it. I'm a people watcher. You see that guy going down the drain and go, yeah, I can use that. Open Igloo co-founder, Alia Mohammed.

48:29Emily Jashinsky:I love staying on top of what is going on in our city, what is going on in city politics, what is on renters' minds, and taking all of that knowledge to build a platform that hopefully is going to make New York City better in the long run. And actress and singer Melissa Errico. Partnership took on a whole other meaning when I started making my own work. It's like you with a great actress or actor. It was best to come out of your trailer full of life and just face another person who's full of life and don't talk. Listen to Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

49:10So the plane takes off. They now understand that they're required to attempt to rescue. these survivors. The plan takes off and it just starts circling. Why would it do that? I can't answer for them, but it seems as if the plan is what they would call in the military, as a guy who used to be in the military, slow rolling it. Let time do its job while it looks like you're doing your job. So instead of executing them 45 minutes later, we let, deliberately let every single one of them slowly drown. That's right. That's right. And there's also been reports in at least two other cases where we, our Coast Guard contacted Coast Guards of another country, either Mexico or El Salvador in two different cases, and asked them to conduct a rescue operation that from what we hear from people who are in those port towns never actually left the port.

50:07Unbelievable. And if you listen to Trump, particularly about the double tap, Trump says, well, people say one strike, two strikes for me. I just wanted them taken out. So he really believes that he has this kind of imperial power that can, with a wave of a hand, say, I want these people killed and they'll be killed. And I think this is a key part of this when you're wondering why. What's going on here? The cartels have been designated as terrorist organizations by the FTL, foreign terrorist organizations by the State Department. Now, that makes it harder for them to travel. It makes it harder for them to bank.

50:43It is not a death penalty. There is not a trial or jury involved. And yet the Trump administration wants you to think that if you've been labeled a terrorist, that it can kill you. And if American citizens accept that, it does not stop in the Caribbean. Look at the way they responded to Alex Petty and Renee Good's deaths. They were domestic terrorists. So if they say you're a terrorist, they're saying they can take you out. And that will happen domestically if people don't say something about this. And here's the other thing. I know Alex Petty's name. I know Renee Good's name. Why don't we know the names of these people?

51:23It's the same situation, right? It's the U.S. government murdering people. Without trial or jury, we should know their names. But it's unclear if the U.S. knows who they're killing. We submitted detailed questions to Southern Command, State Department, and the White House asking, was Alejandro Carranzo killed in the strike on this day? Were Ricky Joseph and Navi Williams killed in the strike on February 13th? And they did not respond to either of those questions. They responded to us, but they did not answer those specific questions. And so it remains unclear if they even know who they're killing.

51:55Let's talk about another man whose name we should know, Rene Kobos. So another layer of this is that Daniel Novo, who's the head of Ecuador, is himself accused of being a massive narco trafficker. He's the scion of a banana export company. The banana shipments are constantly getting found to be smuggling huge amounts of cocaine, particularly. to Europe. Violence in Ecuador under Naboah has made it one of the most dangerous places in the world. So DropSite, for its reporting on the CIA-linked boat strike, and your team as well, worked with Rene Cobos. Tell us, like, who was Rene? Rene is, he lives in Guayaquil, Ecuador, near there.

52:48And he was a, he had kind of a security background. He, we first engaged with him under a security situation, but he ended up becoming a fixer and then a producer, acting as a field producer in pieces. We did a piece on the Ecuadorian military disappearing children last year. And Rene was a field producer on that. He's also recently worked with the BBC as a bill producer. And about three weeks ago, you had two trucks of armed men, three armed men each in jackets, some with pistols, some with rifles, show up to his neighbor's house about two in the morning, go in and kill his neighbor before they realized it was the wrong guy, went into the next house and killed Rene.

53:30Rene was a fixer for us as well. You were telling me recently that he actually saved your life at one point. Can you tell us that story? Sure. We were investigating the illicit trade of shark fins, and we were on the coast of Ecuador, which is a heavily contested area by the New Jalisco cartel and the Sinaloa cartel are having a fight there. It was an extremely violent time. This is a time where – When was this? It was right before the Novoa election. So let's say three years ago. I think my years run together. You had a presidential candidate who was assassinated in the street in broad daylight by seven.

54:10Colombian Sicarios. A governor was murdered shortly after that. We go in, we're on the coast at the Santa Rosa Fish Market. And the mayor of the town we were in, while we were there, it was like one block away from us, was surrounded by gunmen. They opened fire on his car with him and his wife in it, but it was a bulletproof car. So he survived. Just to set the scene for how violent the country was at this moment. The elections were going to happen that weekend. And we went in and filmed at a place where they were fending sharks and people got really upset. And we had been working with a high-level smuggler there and we were supposed to interview him and protect his identity.

54:48We had already interviewed some lower-level smugglers and protected their identity. But when he found out we filmed at this fish market without basically his permission, things went south pretty fast. And they said we need to get out for our safety. And then people started canceling interviews on us. And then that night he called my producer and said, ojo, which means keep your eyes out. It's a threat. and said that they say you're DEA, which is an accusation you can't disprove when you're in that kind of environment. And the tricky part was we're in this basically a soft location, no security at all at the house we're staying at.

55:24And we called Renee in Guayaquil, and they're about to shut down the highways because of the election. They were stopping all highways. And it was about 10 o 'clock at night. He said, I'll be there by 530 in the morning. Don't check out of your hotel. Don't pay your bill. We'll take care of that later. and tell these guys that you're headed to Manta, which is the opposite direction. Tell them, like, I'm sorry, we've offended you. We're going to leave after the election in a couple of days, and we're going to go to Manta. And then he was there before the sun came up, and he got us to Guaing Hill the other direction safely.

55:55And those are the kind of things like, okay, no bullet was ever fired, but when you start getting threats like that in an area like that in a place like Ecuador right now, you take those threats really serious, and Rene dropped everything and extracted us out of that situation. And put himself in danger to do it. He absolutely put himself in danger. Because he's going to be like, you know what? Yeah. Busy tomorrow. And, you know, he did it without pause. Right. He did it without pause. I mean, this is like 10 o 'clock at night. He was there by 530 in the morning and it was a two hour drive. And so, you know, this happens too often in journalism.

56:25Those are the guys who are there who are actually living the risk and will be there after I go in for two weeks and leave. And I carry a really heavy heart for the risk that those guys carry, particularly when it ends up like this with Rene. Any reaction from the government to his killing, the assassination? Not that I have heard of. There's also been assassination of a prosecutor there recently who was investigating the boat strikes off the Ecuadorian coast. There's so much violence in Ecuador right now, I would suspect that there isn't going to be much of an investigation. and in fact there have been I would say credible accusations that the police were involved in what happened to her neck but I can't prove that it's just the way they showed up the equipment they had that that's what people there have said.

57:13Well let's finish by rolling this clip which you can find on YouTube, Killing at Sea.

57:26I think we're just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. OK, we're going to kill them. You know, they're going to be like dead. In September 2025, the Trump administration began targeting vessels in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific that it claims were carrying drugs to the U.S. Whoever piloting those boats, they're guilty of trying to kill people in our country. More than 220 people have been killed in over 60 strikes. But the Trump administration hasn't released any of their names. The only public evidence of their deaths are official press releases and these videos posted by the administration.

58:06It looks like a video game. These are grainy videos where you can't even see individual people. You just see a boat blow up. It's easy to distance yourself from the humanity. The documentary is called Killing at Sea. You can find it on YouTube now. I strongly recommend you check it out. Josh Rushing, thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. This is an important issue. And I think right here, you're in between the one-year anniversary of the first strike and the 25th anniversary of 9-11. and you can trace the American reaction to 9-11 directly to what we're doing now.

58:45And that path goes through Obama's drone war, which may be why more Democrats aren't speaking out about it, but they should, particularly as this expands into a much larger military expansion into the Western atmosphere.

58:57Emily Jashinsky:Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you, Emily. That's going to do it for us on today's edition of Breaking Points. Thank you so much for tuning in. Of course, if you want to make Ryan proud and Sagar angry, head to breakingpoints.com for a free month trial of a premium subscription. That's where you also get a trial of the full version of the newsletter and the show Uncut in Your Inbox every morning early. All right. Thank you. Appreciate it, Ryan. And I will be back on Friday. Crystal and Sagar will be back tomorrow. All right. See you then.

59:40College football will hijack your weekend, ruin your sleep and break your heart. And that's why we make the Solid Verbal College Football Show. I'm Ty Hildenbrandt. He's Dan Rubenstein. Every week we preview the games that matter and the storylines that are going to ignite your group chat. And you can join us in the aftermath as we react to what happened, why it matters, and how the sport went completely bonkers yet again. Listen to the Solid Verbal College Football Show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:00:35to mess up. Listen to Lots to Say with Bobby Bones and Matt Castle on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Big Lives, we take a single cultural icon. People like Jane Fonda, George Michael, Little Richard. And we pull apart the story behind the image, discovering forgotten interviews that change exactly how we see these giants of our culture. We're here for the messy, the brilliant, the human version of our heroes. I'm Emmanuel Jochi. I'm Kai Wright. And this is Big Lives. Listen to Big Lives on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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